


Void

by aphreal



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Renegade Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-04-13 07:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4513479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphreal/pseuds/aphreal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The attack on Mars leaves Kaidan with retrograde amnesia: no memory of his past, his family, his career, or his relationship with Shepard. She decides it would be better not to tell him about their complicated history. When he rejoins the Normandy's crew and begins putting his life back together, he runs into a lot of gaps and no one willing to piss off the volatile commander by filling them in for him. </p><p>ME3 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to SignCherie and TrulyCertain for helping me wrangle this into shape. Also to Fumm95/ravenclawnerd for reminding me how much I enjoy Shenko angst. 
> 
> Originally written for a trope bingo challenge amnesia square.

From: Staff at Huerta Memorial Hospital  
Subject: Patient Alenko  
Commander Shepard,  
You are receiving this message because Kaidan Alenko has consented to your request to be kept informed about his condition.  
He has regained consciousness and is expected to continue to a full physical recovery. There are complications, however, which are best discussed in person. You may visit the clinic for further details at your next convenience on the Citadel.

 

The knot of tension in Mica’s gut tightened as she strode through the reception area at Huerta Memorial, paying no attention to the staff or other visitors as she went directly to the patient rooms. Her breath froze as she reached his door, but she ignored the fear and pushed ahead.

His face was as pale and bruised as the last time she’d seen him here, but his eyes were open, turning towards her as she entered. Suddenly, she could breathe again. “Kaidan.” His name was a sigh of relief.

“I should know who you are, shouldn’t I?” Hearing his familiar voice, weak and rough as it was, soothed away some of the remaining tension. And if he was teasing her already, that meant he couldn’t be too badly hurt – or too pissed about what had happened on Mars. Or before. 

“Come on, Kaidan. My scars aren’t _that_ bad.” Mica smirked, crossing her arms. “You should see Garrus.”

Mica’s voice faltered. Her joking hadn’t won an answering smile, and there was something distant in his eyes, a genuine lack of recognition rather than feigned confusion. As her words died away, the room filled with silence, broken only by the humming of machinery. Struggling to control her growing panic, Mica looked around for answers.

Seeing her mute appeal, one of the doctors stepped forward, his manner brisk and professional. “Mister Alenko was fortunate…”

“Major,” she interrupted. “He’s earned it.”

“Ah, of course.” The doctor glanced down at his datapad chart before continuing. “Major Alenko was fortunate in that the trauma appears to have caused no impairment in his functions or faculties. As far as we’ve been able to determine at this point. However, it would be highly unlikely to emerge from that sort of injury with no lasting damage. In his case, it appears that he is suffering from retrograde amnesia. Loss of most personal memories formed prior to the incident.”

Oblivious to Mica’s shock, the physician continued his recitation. “It is possible this will correct itself as the swelling continues to diminish. And if not, the condition is rarely fully permanent. It is likely that he will regain memories over time as he returns to his normal routines and familiar circumstances. In the meantime, I would suggest that you introduce yourself and explain your relationship in order to provide him with context.”

Explain their relationship… Like it was that simple.

Mica looked back at Kaidan, bothered that he had simply waited passively while the doctor talked about him like he wasn’t there. His face, usually so calm and composed, was lined with concern, confusion, helplessness. Even if Mica found the words to describe their history, how could she inflict such a chaotic mess on him right now? She sure as hell couldn’t do it and stay civil, not when it came to Horizon and house arrest and things that weren’t even entirely his fault but hurt all the same. She needed to stick to the professional. Safe, factual information that would make sense. 

Squaring herself into a more formal military pose, Mica tried to fix a friendly, neutral smile on her face. The act felt so foreign that she almost certainly failed, but maybe he would recognize the attempt, at least. “Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy. We served together on the SSV Normandy a couple of years ago. I brought you to Huerta because you got injured under my command, more or less.” She left out everything about the Reapers and Earth, not sure how much the staff had told him yet about current events. “I’ve been checking in whenever the Normandy docked at the Citadel to see how you’re doing. It’s good to see you awake, Major.”

“Good to be awake, ma’am.” Kaidan regarded her thoughtfully, processing her information and probably trying to guess what she’d left out. Damn it, he’d always been too good at reading her. “I appreciate you coming by. I’m glad to have served under someone who cares so much for her soldiers.”

Mica heard the probing under the last comment. He wanted more of the story. Of course he did. But she couldn’t give it to him. Not now, possibly not ever. “You’re one of the best I’ve worked with,” she responded truthfully.

“Maybe when I get out of here, I’ll have the opportunity again, Shepard.”

“If the brass clears it once you’re recovered, there will always be a place for you on the Normandy.” The room suddenly felt too small, and the words that had slipped out of her mouth said too much. Hearing her name in his voice, but without the layers of meaning, the history… It would have been easier to have him wake up hating her than this.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stay here. “Which is where I should be, on the Normandy. I’ve got a ship to run.” Mica beat a hasty retreat, spouting well wishes and instructions to be kept informed as she fled from those familiar-unfamiliar eyes. She could feel them watching her even when she got back to the ship and told Joker to get them the hell out of here.

 

Mica avoided going back for as long as she could, knowing that staying away made her a coward. She read the periodic reports she received on Kaidan’s physical recovery, hoping each time a message from Huerta showed up in her inbox that he’d regained his memories, that she wouldn’t ever have to face that blank, confused stare. That message never came, and even the most positive progress reports left her with a sense of disappointment in comparison.

Eventually, she couldn’t put off business on the Citadel any longer. As soon as her boots hit the deck of the station, she began walking toward Huerta. That hadn’t been her plan when she’d docked, but the clinic pulled at the aching emptiness inside her in a way she couldn’t ignore. No matter how much it hurt, she had to see him.

Her instincts told her to pause outside the door, to take time to gather her nerve, but that would just be another form of stalling. She forced herself to walk straight in, pace never faltering.

Kaidan looked vastly improved from when she had last seen him. Instead of lying in a hospital bed barely conscious and covered in bruises, he sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in uniform. Everything seemed so normal that Mica froze just inside the door, wanting to capture this moment, to pretend for a second that things were as they should be.

But the memories of the last time she’d been here were too strong, and Mica had never been very good at deluding herself with false hope.

It took a second try to find her voice, but she felt some pride in how casual and collected she sounded. “Looks like you’re feeling better.”

He glanced up at her greeting, and the hesitation in his eyes shattered any illusion of hope. The “real” Kaidan would never look at her with that sort of indecision; no matter how difficult things had been between them, there was always a firm certainty at his core that she envied.

“Commander,” he greeted her with a nod and polite smile. “Sorry if I seem disappointed. I was hoping for one of the docs with release orders to get me out of this place.”

“They’re ready to let you go?”

“There’s nothing left to treat. All I’ve got left is the amnesia… and these headaches.” He winced, raising a hand to his forehead in a gesture that was so familiar it hurt.

Mica tried to ignore it. “You’ve always had the headaches. Side effect of the L2 implants.”

“So I’ve been told.” He regarded her curiously, then shrugged. “Between you and me, I think the only reason I’m still here is that they don’t know where else to send me.”

A fragment of conversation from the hallway caught her attention, and Mica realized that she’d caught the door’s proximity sensors, preventing it from sliding shut and giving her the opportunity to eavesdrop.

“We’re not equipped for long-term care or rehabilitation of this type. And frankly, with all of the war casualties and refugees pouring in, we need the bed.” The doctor sounded tired, resigned.

“What, precisely, do you suggest we do with a man who only knows his name because we told him?” The response had a more sarcastic, frustrated edge.

Mica frowned. “I think you may be right,” she said softly, gesturing for Kaidan to keep quiet so she could hear the rest of the conversation. He raised an eyebrow curiously but nodded assent.

“Move him out to make room for someone we can actually treat!”

“You have no evidence that he’s incurable.”

Mica felt a surge of hope at that and smothered the bitter laughter that nearly followed. When had “not definitively impossible” become her acceptable standard for optimism?

“He’s not going to get better sitting around here.”

“And I ask again, where exactly do you suggest he goes?” This was accompanied by a sigh. If she had to guess, Mica would say this wasn’t the first time these two had covered this ground.

“All of the research says someone in his condition benefits most from familiar, relaxing surroundings. Which a hospital ward decidedly isn’t. He needs to be somewhere he knows, somewhere attached to memories he’ll want to remember.”

That was enough. Mica couldn’t stand there any longer listening to Kaidan’s future debated by people who didn’t even know him. She spun on her heel and strode angrily towards the clinic staff. “Like where? He grew up in Vancouver. Not exactly the most relaxing location at the moment. Even if BAaT training was worth remembering, Jump Zero doesn’t exist any more. Ditto for Alliance HQ, his most recent posting.”

One of the doctors looked cowed, but the other stared her down, clearly offended by the abrupt intrusion. “Do you have any positive suggestions to contribute?”

Mica responded hotly and without thinking. “Release him to me, to the Normandy. Alliance shipboard routines will be familiar, and he knows most of the crew. Or at least he did. It’s probably the closest to a home he has left.”

The doctor looked aghast. “You’re suggesting we send a patient into a war zone?”

“From what I’m hearing, the entire galaxy’s a war zone.” Kaidan’s voice came from over her left shoulder, eerily reminiscent of the way he would drop into formation on missions. She hadn’t even heard him approach. “I can’t think of anywhere much safer than an Alliance cruiser staffed by some of the best soldiers humanity has to offer.”

The doctor began to splutter an indignant response, but his colleague cut him off, apparently sensing that she had found an ally. “If that’s what he wants, we can’t keep him against his will. Even an amnesiac patient has the right to check out AMA.”

“Which he wouldn’t have been aware of if you hadn’t just gone and told him.” The doctor sounded sulky but had clearly been overruled. He muttered under his breath resentfully through the entire process of filling out the discharge forms.

 

Reality caught up with Mica a few minutes later as she stepped out of Huerta onto the Presidium with this new almost-familiar version of Kaidan in tow. What the hell was she doing?

There were moments when she took comfort in having him following her lead again – until she remembered he wasn’t doing it out of trust and forgiveness but because he literally had no other option. She’d wanted him back, but never like this. This wasn’t Kaidan, just some stranger in his body, and she couldn’t let herself forget that even for a second. Every familiar gesture or expression hurt, reminding her of what should have been and wasn’t. She couldn’t take this.

“I hadn’t intended to take charge with your doctors like that.” She needed to keep him talking, to remember he wasn’t who he looked like. Having her face ground in the reality was less painful than denial and flickers of false hope.

He shrugged casually. “Seems like that should be expected from having a CO around.” His brow creased briefly with a thought. “But unless I’m confused, don’t I outrank you?”

Mica huffed an unamused laugh accompanied by a bitter half-smile. “It’s been a busy year. You got a promotion; I got six months’ house arrest.” He looked like he wanted to dig further into that, but Mica cut him off before he could ask a question that would only lead to Cerberus and resentment and arguments he couldn’t hold up his side of. “The details don’t matter. Regardless, at this point, I have a ship and you needed a way out of that hospital room.”

“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

Mica clenched her jaw against an angry retort. Kaidan shouldn’t fold like that, shouldn’t back down from her. She wanted to yell at him, to provoke a response, to push him until he started pushing back. But a tiny part of her that remained rational held back the angry words. It would be cruel to attack him for reasons he couldn’t possibly understand. Instead she ground her teeth together and took deep breaths until she could trust herself to speak evenly.

“My point was that you haven’t been press ganged. I offered the Normandy to get you released, but if you don’t want to come, no one’s keeping track.”

“No, you were right. If I’ve got history there, it’s the best place for me right now.”

 _’History’ didn’t matter a year ago when I needed you._ Mica bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood, keeping those words from flying out. Instead, all she said was, “If you ever change your mind, just ask and we’ll drop you anywhere you want that isn’t Reaper-held territory.” She needed to get away from him before she lost one of these internal battles and said something she couldn’t take back. “I’ve got business on the Citadel. The Normandy’s docked in bay D24. Joker will let you in. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”

Without waiting for an answer, she picked up her pace and left him behind. Between the VIs and signs, he should be able to find his way to the docking bays. And if she felt a small flash of satisfaction at being the one to do the leaving, it was so tangled up in all the layers of bitterness and regret and anger that it hardly mattered.


	2. Chapter 2

After walking and cooling off for a few minutes, Mica felt a brief pang of guilt about sending Kaidan off blind like that with no idea who or where he was. But he should be fine, and regardless there was no way for her to track him down now. To partially assuage her guilt, at least she could make sure he would get a decent reception at the ship when he found it.

She pulled up her omnitool and paused. This would be a lot easier if she’d actually told anyone else on the Normandy about Kaidan’s amnesia. She’d kept hoping he would recover his memories before it became necessary. That hope had proven as futile as usual, and she’d run out of time. She couldn’t put off explanations any longer.

Gritting her teeth, she radioed the Normandy, trying to keep her voice as normal as possible. “Joker, you on board?”

“Where else, Commander?”

Mica grinned with relief that something was finally going her way today, but that didn’t mean she’d pass up the chance to needle her smartass pilot. “Purgatory, last time I checked.”

“Nah, you said this was a short stop. There’s no point hitting a bar when I’m going to have to fly soon.”

“The Normandy’s expecting a new passenger. Can you keep an eye out to make sure he shows up?”

“Sure thing. Who am I looking for?”

“Major Alenko.” Mica tensed, preparing to give the dreaded explanation.

“Kaidan’s back? The docs finally let him go? That’s great!”

She didn’t respond, trying to figure out how to explain. Apparently she hesitated too long.

“It is great, isn’t it?” Joker sounded concerned.

Taking a deep breath, Mica laid it out for him as quickly and succinctly as possible. “There were complications from the head trauma. He doesn’t remember… well, much of anything, to be frank.”

That drew a shocked silence from her usually irreverent and unflappable helmsman. “Okay, yeah… that’s new.”

Mica continued briskly, wanting to just get through this. “The doctors hope that being somewhere familiar will help. Give the crew a heads-up so they know how to treat him, and have someone he knows – maybe Garrus – show him around.”

“You got it, Commander.” There was silence across the line for a moment before Joker asked hesitantly, “Commander, are you okay?”

Normally she would have appreciated his concern – Joker was one of the few people she would accept it from – but at the moment it grated on already raw nerves. “Just take care of it, Joker.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” He still sounded skeptical, but Joker knew when not to push.

Satisfied that things on the ship would be handled, Mica cut the connection and went to finish her business on the Citadel.

 

He stood in the large, open atrium, watching Shepard walk away and resisted the urge to call her back. An Alliance officer must have more important things to do than babysitting an amnesiac soldier. It wouldn’t be appropriate to take up more of her time to no good purpose. No matter how lost and lonely he felt, standing in an unfamiliar place surrounded by impersonal strangers. He couldn’t help staring at each face that he passed, wondering if he’d known them, if they belonged somewhere in the gaping void of his past. 

Thinking like that could drive a man crazy. 

Kaidan - he needed to start thinking of himself by name, reinforcing his identity, like the hospital staff had done - shook off the distraction and focused on the task at hand: finding the Normandy. And that meant finding his way to the docking bays. 

Asking for directions gained him an incredulous stare - from an elcor, so he’d been clearly informed of the incredulity - and an explanation about the Citadel’s tour guide VI. Mira - this piece of software was more definite about its name than he was about his - proved quite helpful, and he set out on the path she’d suggested to reach the docking bays, feeling moderately confident for the first time since he’d woken up as a blank slate. Having a purpose and a plan, however simple of one, gave him something to focus on beyond the gaping uncertainty. 

As his feet carried him along the prescribed landmarks, his mind turned back to the puzzle of Commander Shepard. She’d championed him to his doctors without a thought, demonstrating a detailed knowledge of his background and a fierce concern for his well-being. Honestly, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had decked any member of the medical staff who tried to get in her way. The doctors had probably gotten that sense, too; his discharge paperwork had gone faster than anything else he’d seen happen in Huerta Memorial. 

She’d been willing to fight half the hospital to get Kaidan released to her ship, but she couldn’t look him in the eye. He’d heard all of the gaps between her too-careful words and wished he had the first clue what she wasn’t saying. There had been something in her voice, in her eyes, when she first came to see him. Hesitation, hope, fear, relief… He didn’t know. He’d been so startled by her intensity when she first appeared - hard angles and sharply cut blond hair - that he hadn’t been able to decipher her expression past the angry red scars slicing a faint grid across her face. Whatever he thought he’d seen had vanished so quickly that he’d halfway convinced himself to chalk it up to the painkillers and disorientation. 

But then today… No, he hadn’t imagined anything. There was definitely something strange in how Shepard looked at him, talked to him, talked _about_ him. The woman made him uncomfortable - almost as much as he seemed to make her - but he couldn’t know why without information she clearly had no intention of giving him. 

Still, anywhere Kaidan went at the moment, he’d be walking in blind, and he could do worse than an Alliance ship run by a CO with a clear interest in his welfare, even if he didn’t understand her motivations. 

Arriving at docking bay D24, Kaidan paused to survey the Normandy. She had sleek lines and a sense of grace to her. A strange design but elegant. All in all, she was a beautiful ship, one he would be proud to serve on. He only wished she looked familiar. Shepard had described the Normandy as the closest thing he had to a home, and he’d hoped to feel _something_. But standing here, looking at this cutting edge ship, his only reaction was a sense of admiration for a beautiful piece of technology. 

He shouldn’t be disappointed; no one had expected an instant cure. But damn if he wasn’t tired of feeling adrift inside his own head. He’d welcome even the smallest flicker of recognition as a starting point to anchor onto. 

Still, nowhere to go but forward, and he certainly wasn’t going to improve by brooding in a docking bay. Kaidan approached the ship’s airlock, but the sight of a turian waiting by the door drew him up short. A flash of hope. Maybe he’d found the wrong ship. Maybe he would recognize the right one. “I was looking for the SSV Normandy. Do I have the wrong bay?” 

The turian’s mandibles twitched in an expression every bit as foreign and unreadable as Shepard’s, if for different reasons. “No, this is Normandy. Nothing else like her.” Like Shepard, the turian boasted an impressive set of scars across his face. At least his had the decency not to glow. 

Kaidan tried to hide the sudden disappointment, casting his gaze back over the cruiser. “She’s certainly unique. Beautiful ship.” He looked back to the turian, hoping to make a good impression, however belated. “I thought she was an Alliance vessel, didn’t expect to be greeted by a turian. No offense intended.” 

“None taken.” The turian’s mandibles clicked, and Kaidan thought his resonant voice took on a slightly strained tone, but he held his hand out in a friendly gesture. “Garrus Vakarian.” 

Kaidan took the offered hand. “Major Kaidan Alenko.” 

A slight huff of amusement as the turian - Garrus - shook his hand. “I know.” 

Kaidan rubbed at his temple, fighting off the start of a headache. “Right, sorry, I should have guessed.” 

“It’s not your fault.” Kaidan suspected that the turian’s expression was the analogue of a sympathetic smile, although he couldn’t be certain why he thought so. Garrus turned, beckoning for him to follow. “Welcome aboard. Let me show you around.” 

Kaidan frowned as a fragment of memory jogged loose. “Garrus, right. Shepard mentioned you.” 

“Do I want to know what she said?” He sounded amused. 

“Nothing much.” Kaidan shrugged. “She said I might not recognize you because of -” He gestured at his own face, hoping Garrus would get the idea. “Of course, that was before she realized…” 

“That you weren’t going to recognize anyone regardless?” A slight shake of his head. “I can’t imagine Shepard took that well.” 

“She’s a hard woman to read.” Kaidan settled for a diplomatic answer, not wanting to venture an opinion without knowing the lay of the land. 

That earned a faint chuckle. “She can be, although you didn’t always think so.” 

Garrus tossed the words over his shoulder, maddeningly casual, but before Kaidan could seize the opening, a new voice joined the conversation, relaxed and slightly irreverant. “Careful, Vakarian. You don’t want to overload him before he even gets in the door.” 

The pilot’s casual slouch and mischievous expression matched his voice, and he offered Kaidan a friendly wave. “Flight lieutenant Jeff Moreau, but most people call me -” 

“Joker.” Cutting him off had been rude, but it felt good to have context for something, however trivial. 

The bearded pilot’s eyebrows raised. “Aren’t you supposed to have amnesia?” 

Kaidan snorted. The lack of tact was almost refreshing; he’d gotten tired of everyone walking on eggshells around him in the hospital. “Lucky guess. Commander Shepard mentioned you as the doorman.” 

“Ouch.” Joker put a hand to his chest. “What does a guy have to do to earn a little respect around here? Kaidan’s back for all of two minutes, and he’s sassing me without even knowing whether I deserve it.” His expression of mock pain shifted to a sly smirk. “I have to admit I’m relieved, though. I did not want to have to explain to Shepard why you remember me and not her. Even if I have known you longer.” 

Garrus made a strangely resonant grinding sound, probably the turian equivalent of clearing his throat. “Speaking of not wanting to explain lapses to Shepard, why don’t we get started on the tour she asked me to give you?” 

Kaidan, peering around what he could see of the place from the cockpit, had to admit he was curious about the rest of the ship. “I’d appreciate that.” 

“All right, sure, whatever.” Joker waved dismissively, turning back to his display screens. “See ya.” 

Bemused, Kaidan followed Garrus down into the heart of the Normandy, laying odds on whether it would take longer to make sense of the ship’s engineering or its crew. 

 

When she got back to the Normandy, Mica arranged a meeting with Garrus and Liara, making it very clear she wanted to talk to only the two of them, not any uninvited tagalong Garrus might still have. She couldn’t face seeing him again, couldn’t trust herself not to say things that shouldn’t be said. Joker had already briefed her inner circle on Kaidan’s condition, saving her from having to explain. Liara appeared to be having trouble accepting the situation. 

Garrus, on the other hand, focused on the practicalities. “The doctors wanted him somewhere familiar. They do realize he’s never actually served on this ship?”

Mica folded her arms and stared him down. She hadn’t let the doctors at Huerta challenge this decision, and she wouldn’t stand for it on her own ship. “The SR-1 isn’t exactly available thanks to the Collectors, and the Reapers have closed off most of the other options for places he would recognize. This was what I had.”

“At least he knows most of the crew.” Liara’s bright tone held forced optimism, and Mica had to grit her teeth against a harsh response. What in this mess was she supposed to find hopeful? 

“We don’t have any idea _what_ he knows, at this point. Which is what I need the two of you for.” She regarded them both with a level stare. “This isn’t a convalescence center; it’s a war ship. When things get ugly, I need to know if he’s an asset or a liability. Work with him. Find out if he can still fight.” _Find out if he’ll be safe here or if I’ve put him in a situation where he can’t protect himself._

“You fought alongside him long enough to know what he should be capable of.” She deliberately refused to dwell on any of that time together, the group of them an unstoppable team standing against the worst the Terminus system could throw at them. “Garrus, spend some time at a shooting range, a sparring ring, hell even a tech bench if you think it’s relevant. Liara, you’re the best biotic I’ve got on this ship; see how the BAaT training’s holding up now that he doesn’t remember BAaT.”

“Of course, Shepard.” Liara nodded, her manner and voice still radiating sympathy that Mica didn’t want to face. Where had the sympathy been when he’d left her the first time? Apparently, it only mattered now that the separation wasn’t his choice. 

“And what are you going to be doing?” Garrus, at least, was testing her, and that put her back on more comfortable footing, having something to push back against, an outlet for the frustration simmering under her skin.

“Me? I’ll be trying to broker peace between the krogan and the turians. Probably while pissing off every salarian not on this ship. That should keep me plenty busy for a while.” 

And if it kept her from thinking about the man she’d… the man who had walked away from her, living on her ship with no memory of everything that had happened between them, that would be an added benefit.


	3. Chapter 3

As she’d predicted, Mica spent the next several days dealing with krogan-turian diplomatic relations – such as they were – and badgering Mordin to work faster. Garrus and Liara’s progress updates, while not exactly welcome interruptions, at least provided some variety.

Garrus called over her omnitool the first day, which rarely happened, given his preference for face to face conversations. If he’d commed instead of catching her for a sitdown, her strategy of avoiding trivial problems by being hard to find must be working. 

“Good news, Shepard.” The turian’s casual, up-beat greeting moderated her urge to snap at him for interrupting her downtime. 

“Great, I could use some.” As much as she admired and respected Wrex, Mica was getting damn tired of keeping him and the Primarch from each other’s throats on a daily basis. If it weren’t likely to cause a diplomatic incident and provoke fights she wasn’t entirely certain she’d win, she probably would have decked both of them by now.

“I took our recovery patient for some target practice today at a make-shift range in one of the cargo holds.” Garrus’s drawl was deceptively casual, deliberately nonchalant. 

Mica appreciated the effort; even if she could see through him, it let her pretend and go along with it. Acting like they were discussing a green recruit or a transfer from another post, she could almost avoid thinking about how much the whole damned thing hurt. Keeping her hands from clenching, she gestured for Garrus to continue. 

“He shot like he was coming back from a week of shore leave, not months in a coma. There’s some loss of muscle tone, but that’s only to be expected after a long convalescence. I’d certify him for anything light without a nasty recoil.”

“Set him up for strength training with Vega. That should get him back in shape. But Doctor Chakwas has to sign off on whatever James comes up with. He tends to forget the human body has limits.”

Garrus’s dry chuckle echoed across the comm channel. “In that case, I may give him a day or two to get good and sore before we start hand-to-hand.”

“Whatever edge you think you need, Vakarian.”

 

Liara’s first report was every bit as encouraging, if delivered in a more reserved manner and in person.

“Shepard, there you are.”

“What’s up, Liara?” Apparently this lounge wasn’t as out-of-the-way as Mica had hoped. Either that or Liara had been particularly persistent in tracking her down. She probably shouldn’t have even tried hiding from an information broker. 

“Kaidan came to see me for his initial biotic assessment. I thought you’d want to hear how it went.”

Mica nodded, tensing further at the mention of his name. “What did you learn?”

“He’s remarkably gifted, but I suppose that’s not really news, is it?”

Mica didn’t comment, waiting for Liara to get to the point. She hadn’t been hanging around obscure parts of the ship for the past several days because she was interested in idle conversation.

“Honestly, Shepard, I’m impressed. Kaidan’s skills and power level are at least as good as I remember, possibly better. I would say he’s made some advances in the time since we were hunting Saren.”

“Or he’s forgotten why he used to hold back.”

“I suppose that’s possible.” Liara frowned. “Regardless, I consulted Doctor Chakwas, since she’s far more of an expert in human physiology. She hypothesized that it has to do with how biotics are trained, especially humans, associating biotic power with physical activities.”

Mica nodded. “Pair the energy with a gesture that’s easier to remember and replicate.”

“Precisely. Doctor Chakwas believes that the ‘muscle memory’ of those mnemonic gestures has been retained entirely intact. Apparently the human brain stores those sorts of memories differently from personal event memory, so it’s reasonable to assume they wouldn’t be affected by the amnesia.”

Mica didn’t care about the reasons he couldn’t remember his past; they wouldn’t change anything. What mattered was whether he could take care of himself while he tried to put things back together. “So bottom line is he’s not defenseless.”

“Far from it,” Liara agreed with a small, pleased smile.

“Good.” Mica nodded decisively, trying to force him out of her mind. She didn’t have the energy to deal with this right now. “Keep working with him if you want. Maybe you’ll both learn something, and if nothing else, contact with a familiar face may do him good.”

Liara hesitated a moment. “In that case, Shepard, wouldn’t it be better for you to…”

Mica cut her off. “What I need to do is find the Primarch’s lost son and keep Cerberus from blowing up half the krogan before Mordin can cure them.” She stood up, effectively ending the conversation. “I’ll be taking Garrus and Vega with me on that, so he’s all yours while we’re gone.”

 

After Kaidan’s success on the target range, Garrus promised him a sparring match to test his hand-to-hand combat as well. The planned match got delayed by a mission to defuse a bomb on Tuchanka, but Garrus rescheduled it shortly after returning to the ship. The salarian scientist in the medical lab needed time for final modifications and optimization for the genophage cure he’d been crafting, so Garrus had sufficient time before going back planetside with Shepard. 

Kaidan had been looking forward the the match, a chance to stretch his muscles and test another set of skills. But he quickly discovered that his strong showings with firearms and biotics had given him an unwarranted confidence. He’d retained skills with a pistol or an amp, but pugilism had clearly never been his forte. This dismal showing against Garrus might be giving him valuable information about his past self, but it definitely wasn’t doing anything for his ego. 

As Garrus dodged another of Kaidan’s jabs, slipping away in an unexpected direction and making the attack seem clumsy and amateurish, Kaidan started to wonder if trusting his muscle memory worked against him here. He’d been trying not to overthink, trusting his body to remember things he couldn’t, just like Doctor Chakwas had suggested. But unlike holding a pistol or firing off a biotic mnemonic, his instincts were all wrong for sparring with a turian. Strikes that should have connected became glancing blows at best, and Garrus’s attacks came from unexpected angles that Kaidan was hard pressed to anticipate and avoid. 

After scraping his knuckles against Garrus’s carapace - probably doing more harm to himself than his opponent - Kaidan wondered if he might be decent at hand to hand combat against another human. Maybe his instincts weren’t lacking so much as miscalibrated. The engineer in him started analyzing the relative height of a turian compared to an average human. Not to mention the differences in proportion and joint mobility. 

The added distraction didn’t help any, and Kaidan’s misaligned reflexes finally got the best of him. Dodging away, he caught one of Garrus’s elbows in the face. Pain blossomed through his head, the intensity of it making him dizzy, and he stumbled backwards, hands raised protectively to his face. 

Disoriented, he struggled to keep his feet, staggering painfully into a stack of crates. The boxes toppled over, falling from their neat stack into a haphazard wall that blocked his escape. Panicking, trapped, blood rushing in his ears and pain spiking in his head, he turned to face the threat. His vision blurred, everything too bright and too sharp, but he made out the shape of a turian, a taloned hand stretching out towards him. Cornered, with no way out, Kaidan reacted without conscious thought, shouting and raising his hand in an instinctive mnemonic. 

The world went blue, and over the roaring in his ears, Kaidan dimly heard a startled yelp, followed by the thud of a body hitting a hard surface. 

Cursing under his breath, Kaidan forcibly reined in his biotics, pulse racing and breaths ragged as the remnants of his panic combined with terror about what his uncontrolled biotics had done. He scanned the cargo bay rapidly, finding Garrus slumped against a bulkhead on the far side of the space. Kaidan sprinted over to help him, reflexively reaching for a pocket or pouch that wasn’t there. Had he been trained as a medic? 

By the time he reached Garrus, the turian had dragged himself to a sitting position, groaning and grumbling. Kaidan apologized profusely, horrified that he’d hurt someone who was trying to help him, someone who was almost certainly a friend he couldn’t remember. Why hadn’t anyone realized he could be dangerous? Why hadn’t _he_ realized? A powerful biotic as a blank slate, remembering all of his training and none of his control. The only miracle was that no one had been hurt more seriously. 

Garrus waved off the apology, although he flinched away from Kaidan’s outstretched hand. “I’ll be fine. A bit sore, I’m sure, but that’s hardly a novelty.” He blinked twice and shook his head slightly. “More importantly, what was that you yelled when you tossed me across the room? It didn’t sound like part of your usual mnemonics.” 

“I have no idea.” Kaidan spread his hands helplessly. “I didn’t even realize I’d said anything. I wasn’t exactly operating at a conscious level.” 

Garrus’s mandibles clicked. “I would hope not. I’d take it personally if I thought you’d hurled me into a wall intentionally.” He tilted his head, thinking, and mumbled under his breath for a moment, trying out sounds before nodding firmly and looking back at Kaidan. “Vyrnnus, that was it. Sounds turian.” 

“I’ll have to trust you on that one. The word means nothing to me. Not that that’s a real surprise.” 

“It must have had a strong meaning at some point to go with that sort of reaction. Maybe it will come to you later.” Garrus groaned as he pulled himself up with the help of a nearby crate, dislodged from its tidy stack by his fall. “I’d say we’re done here for today. Maybe we can consider a rematch after the husks, ravagers, and thresher maws take their turns beating me up.” 

Kaidan watched guiltily as Garrus exited the cargo bay, the turian’s stiff posture suggesting Kaidan’s throw had done more damage than he wanted to admit. 

 

Mica didn’t bother trying to conceal her grin as Garrus winced when he dropped incautiously into a chair to tell her about the match. “I’m guessing things went well.”

Garrus grimaced. “I don’t know about his traditional unarmed combat skills, but there’s nothing wrong with his biotics.”

“You should have set the ground rules better if you didn’t want him using them.” Mica smirked. She wouldn’t have expected Kaidan to pull out biotics in a sparring match; that was more her style.

“I did.” Garrus responded dryly, but his annoyance was accompanied by a hint of rueful amusement. “I’ve seen you punch out an Atlas, Shepard. I’m not going to under-estimate a biotic slam any time soon.”

“So he cheated?” Mica frowned. That didn’t sound like Kaidan at all.

Garrus shook his head. “Not intentionally. Something set him off. I got in a good hit, and next thing I know I’m flying into the wall. He seemed as shocked as I was. The only explanation I could get out of him was ‘Vyrnnus’.” Garrus shrugged. “It sounds like a turian name, but beyond that it didn’t mean anything to either of us.”

Mica froze, and she could feel the blood drain from her face. Garrus must have noticed her reaction. 

“But it does to you, I take it.”

“He was a trainer at BAaT. Pushed the kids hard. Too hard. He found and exceeded their limits, but some of them broke in the process.” Mica answered while her mind was occupied with the ramifications of that discovery. She wasn’t sure if she should be encouraged by this evidence of spontaneous memory recovery or horrified that it hadn’t occurred to her that this new version of Kaidan could be dangerous, even inadvertently. Especially inadvertently. 

“Don’t spar with him again.” Mica’s tone was firm, harsh. “Turn that over to Vega, too. Hell, James may teach him some dirty tricks while he’s at it.”

“Understood, Shepard. I’ll focus on the tech work for now.” Garrus sounded relaxed, but Mica could see the curiosity in his eyes. “BAaT’s been dismantled for years. What happened to this Vyrnnus?”

She debated answering. It wasn’t her story to tell, but Garrus had that look in his eyes that said he wasn’t going to back off without a reason. For his own safety, he needed to know what he’d stumbled into. “He pushed one of the kids too hard, hurt her pretty badly. Kaidan killed him. It turns out the turian neck is particularly vulnerable to force applied from specific directions.”

“I’ll... keep that in mind.” Garrus sounded startled. Apparently that wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“He didn’t know. It was an accident. But it’s not one I want to see repeated.” She paused. “And Garrus? Don’t tell him.”

Garrus blinked, surprised. “You don’t think he should know he’s starting to regain memories, however fragmentary?”

“If you think that will help, sure. But don’t mention the accident.” Garrus didn’t look like he was going to let it drop, so she elaborated. “Knowing you’re a killer isn’t the best core to form an identity around. Let’s not start him there.”

“I suppose not.” Garrus regarded her thoughtfully, his gaze uncomfortable enough that she quickly manufactured a pressing need to check in on Mordin’s progress.

 

“Shepard, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, EDI. What do you need?”

“It’s about Major Alenko. He’s attempting to read various secured files, and I’m uncertain what level of access to give him.”

Mica realized she should have expected this. Kaidan was trying to put his life back together, so he was going to be searching for any information he could get his hands on that might help. It would make sense that he’d gotten to questions the public databases couldn’t answer for him.

“Anything he wants.” Her response was immediate, but then she thought better of it. EDI had a lot more flexibility than most computer systems, but she still tended to take things too literally. “Within reason. If he’s asking for classified Alliance battle plans, that one’s Hackett’s call.”

“I would prefer more clearly defined parameters.”

Mica sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Give him whatever level of clearance he had before Mars. Anything he could have seen then, he can have now. Nothing’s changed.”

“Understood, Shepard. Thank you.”

EDI broke the connection, and Mica tried not to dwell on the ready acceptance of her blatant lie.

 

The incident with Garrus rattled Kaidan. Working with Liara had demonstrated the amount of force he could bring to bear with his biotics, but he’d never imagined losing control like that. He could have badly hurt someone he considered a friend. And he wasn’t the only one worried about that possibility. No matter what excuses Garrus gave him about benefitting from Vega’s hand to hand combat expertise, he knew the change in his schedule had been intended to protect Garrus. From him. Because of something lurking in his head that he knew nothing about and couldn’t control. 

Concern about what else might be hidden in his past, ready to ambush someone trying to help him, drove Kaidan to start compulsively researching his history. The doctors had advised against it, wanting him to recover his memories naturally rather than recreating artificial versions influenced by outside information. He’d followed their instructions up to this point. But they weren’t the ones at risk of being thrown through a bulkhead by his buried secrets, so he’d decided to disregard their advice. Cautiously. 

Kaidan started simple, accessing his service record. His combat history seemed like the most likely place to uncover things that might trigger unexpected violence. It made for fascinating reading, no question about that. Geth, rachni, collector wasps, a giant mind-controlling tree. His mission logs read like something out of a bad mid-twentieth space serial. 

Some of it made sense, at least. Did the history with Saren explain his sudden panic while sparring with Garrus, an instinctive distrust of the wrong turian? Given that Garrus had apparently been with him on the team that took down Saren, that explanation felt insufficient. 

He’d hoped to move on to personal files next. Journals or messages or whatever else he might have saved. Unfortunately, the only thing he learned from attempting to access those was that, whoever he’d been before, he took password security and digital privacy very seriously. Probably a smart decision, but an extremely frustrating one in the current circumstances. 

Shepard had mentioned Jump Zero, but all his searches related to the station turned up vague references to a biotic training program shut down years ago. The complete lack of information on the place strongly suggested a cover up, but it gave him no clues who was hiding what. 

The most complicated - and interesting - parts of his past seemed to all involve Commander Shepard. Somewhere along the line, he realized that he’d switched from researching himself to researching her. The picture he was piecing together of her life seemed even less believable than the most outlandish parts of his. He needed more information, the sort he wouldn’t find in dry mission reports.


	4. Chapter 4

As far as Mica was concerned, Liara didn’t have any reason to report in to her: she’d said from the beginning that Kaidan’s biotic skills were fine. What more did Mica need to know? But somehow, that didn’t stop the asari from finding reasons to bring him up.

“Kaidan’s asking about you.”

Mica ground her teeth. “So tell him something.”

“Shepard, couldn’t you at least talk to him?” The edge of long-suffering patience in Liara’s tone was too much to take.

“Liara, I don’t have time for this right now. Mordin’s ready. We’re about to go cure the genophage in the middle of a damned Reaper offensive. I’ve got more important things to do than have a heart-to-heart with someone who doesn’t even remember that he knows me. I’m taking Garrus with me to Tuchanka, so you keep track of Kaidan while we’re gone.”

She stormed away to get geared up for the mission, refusing to give Liara another chance to get under her skin. She couldn’t handle any distractions right now.

 

But it wasn’t just Liara who persisted in coming to her with updates on Kaidan.

“Hey, Lola.”

Vega was normally someone Mica found comfortable, easy to be around. He was an uncomplicated person – or at least liked to pretend to be – and never demanded more emotional insight or sharing than she wanted to give. In someone else, the constant flirting and innuendo might have put her off, but it was so blatant and overdone that she’d never been able to take him particularly seriously.

At the moment, though, Vega regarded her with an amused expression that promised trouble she was not in the mood to deal with. “Something you need, Lieutenant?”

“Just looking for clarification on how to handle my new dance partner. Scars wasn’t real clear on what you were looking for.”

Mica bit the inside of her cheek and resisted the urge to swear. She did not need this right now. How was she supposed to keep her head on straight if half her crew kept insisting on talking about Kaidan? She needed to shut down this conversation before it eroded the flimsy emotional barriers she’d managed to pull together. 

“Physical rehab. He’s been on medically enforced bed rest, and no matter how good the docs are, there’s going to be some muscle atrophy. Get him over it and back in fighting shape. This is a war ship, and I don’t carry tourists. He needs to be able to defend himself.”

Vega shrugged. “Yeah, I got that part. What about the rest of him?”

Mica narrowed her eyes, wary of a trap.

Vega rolled his shoulder, looking slightly uncomfortable under her scrutiny. “It seems like his brain took a worse beating than his body. You want me to help put that back together, too?”

She frowned as she considered the idea. As far as she knew, the two of them hadn’t been acquainted before the Reapers hit Earth, so it hadn’t even occurred to her that Vega might have a role in helping with Kaidan’s amnesia. “What did you have in mind?”

“Apparently the doc’s got some theory about muscle memory. Remembering through doing. The major asked me to help him try some things out, see if anything jogged loose.” Vega shifted his weight, stretching his neck like it was stiffening up. He never looked comfortable standing still, trying to rein in all of that energy. “So I’ve been helping him try some things, but then I thought maybe I should clear that.”

Mica shrugged, refusing to narrate some sort of list of interests like she was putting together a personal ad for her ex. “As long as he’s not experimenting with anything that puts the ship or crew in danger, do whatever you want.” The things she remembered most clearly about Kaidan - his calm focus, his stability, his subtle humor, the way having him at her back let her breathe when she wanted to scream - wouldn’t help Vega, and dwelling on it would only kill her focus. She couldn’t afford to get distracted by her emotions, not when she was trying to manage a supply chain to provide levo rations to an entire krogan army on a Reaper-held dextro planet. When the hell had she become a requisitions officer?

Vega chuckled, drawing her attention back. She’d thought - hoped - they were finished. What more did he want from her? “I think I’ve managed to head off the worst of it now that he’s promised to stop torturing food.” Vega shook his head with an expression of despair. “Seriously, Lola, you would not believe how that man cooks. If you can’t sear or fry it, he’s got no clue. And it all ends up bland, like he’s never heard of spices. Or flavor.”

Mica smirked, amused despite herself. She carefully didn’t remember Kaidan’s promises to cook for her, romantic dinners and breakfasts in bed on their next shore leave. The one that never happened. She fixed her eyes on Vega’s cheshire cat grin and tried to match it. “He’s Canadian. Not everyone can have your dramatic culinary flair.” 

“That’s no excuse. My abuela would weep to see the things he does to an egg.”

“So find a hobby that keeps him out of the mess.” She couldn’t keep talking about him, probing at the sore spots in her mind that never got a chance to scab over and heal. They were done here. 

“That’s the plan.” Vega read the unspoken dismissal and headed out with a lazy salute. He paused at the door. “Think he plays poker?”

Mica barely glanced up from her datapad, despite the text being too blurry to read. “Why ask me? Go try him and find out.”

 

Since Kaidan didn’t seem to be able to track down the commander herself, he decided to broach the subject with Garrus during his next tech lesson. “Did Shepard really spend two years dead?”

Garrus looked up from the weapons system controls he was fiddling with. “In a manner of speaking.” He seemed to pick up that Kaidan was no longer interested in his assigned decryption puzzle. “That’s certainly what the official records reflect, but it’s harder to say for certain. She was listed among the casualties when the SR-1 was destroyed, but we found out later that her body had been retrieved and… revived. The two years is how long it took to reconstruct her.”

That sounded like a pretty sanitized account missing a lot of details, but Kaidan let it go. He would take what he could get for now rather than pushing and running the risk of shutting down his best information source. “Is that what changed her? Dying, I mean.”

The turian chuckled. “No, I think they mostly got her back in the right way around.”

Kaidan frowned. “She seems so much harder compared to all the newsvid footage of the Hero of the Citadel.” The Shepard he’d seen in the earlier clips had smiled. Not often and not always comfortably, but she smiled, and sometimes her eyes lit up in a way that made her magnetic. Kaidan thought maybe he could understand how she inspired so much loyalty, a crew that followed her into the unknown without question. As he watched the more recent news reports - the dangerous, edgy woman on a crusade to save the galaxy, hard and angry and frustrated - Kaidan found himself missing those rare glimpses of her smile. “Something changed.” 

Garrus nodded, looking thoughtful for a moment. “Honestly, I would say the start of the problem was that dying _didn’t_ change anything for her.”

Kaidan must have looked skeptical, and Garrus elaborated.

“You have to understand, she spent those two years in a coma, at best. It was like that time just didn’t happen for her. But for the rest of us… A lot can happen in two years. She expected to just pick things up where they’d left off. Some of us could do that. I was only too happy to walk away from where she found me.” He chuckled wryly, then fixed Kaidan with a more serious look. “Some of us couldn’t. If you want my best honest guess on how the change in Shepard started, it was when you walked away.”

“You’re saying that it’s my fault?” Kaidan felt a surge of resentment. How was he supposed to defend against accusations about things he couldn’t remember doing? 

Garrus remained unruffled. “No. You had your reasons, and they weren’t bad ones from where you were standing.” He shrugged, and then his mandibles clicked in the turian equivalent of a grin. “I’m not blaming you… but Shepard might.” 

Somehow, Kaidan found that less than reassuring. 

 

“Hey, Shepard.”

Mica grimaced, recognizing Garrus’s attempting-to-sound-casual voice. With a sigh, she closed the message from the salarian councilor. There was nothing she could do about whatever Udina was up to until she got to the Citadel, anyway, so she might as well accept the distraction.

Looking up, she greeted the turian with a raised eyebrow that he took as invitation, dropping lightly into a seat facing her.

“So… Alenko’s started asking some difficult questions during his tech sessions.”

Mica snorted derisively. “Don’t ask me; dealing with tech stuff is what I keep you around for.”

“Believe me, if they were tech questions, you wouldn’t be my first stop.” Garrus’s mandibles twitched as he smirked at her. “A shotgun is rarely the best solution to a difficult encryption problem.”

She shrugged, stubbornly refusing to encourage him by asking the obvious question. Apparently her entire crew was determined to keep bringing their thoughts about Kaidan to her, but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy on them.

Garrus shifted awkwardly as the silence stretched out, eventually giving in with a sigh. “He’s stopped asking questions about his past and started prying into yours.”

Mica frowned. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the idea of this new version of Kaidan digging around in her life made her uncomfortable.

Before Mica could decide if she wanted to know exactly what Kaidan had been asking about her, she was startled by EDI interjecting herself into the conversation.

“That is consistent with the patterns I have observed in his extranet usage and shipboard file access.”

“EDI, has anyone ever explained the concept of privacy to you?”

“Of course, Shepard. I have complete fluency in multiple Council race languages. Social conventions dictate that the presence of an uninvolved party negates the concept of privacy. The crew is fully aware of my omnipresence on the ship, thus conversations cannot be deemed private unless this is specifically indicated to me.” The AI paused briefly, while Mica pinched the bridge of her nose and resisted the urge to respond more directly. “Major Alenko seems particularly interested in the circumstances surrounding your death and revivification.”

Garrus nodded. “He asked me if dying was what changed you so much.”

“What did you tell him?” Mica knew she would regret asking, but a masochistic part of her wanted to hear the answer.

Garrus looked down, breaking eye contact and fidgeting slightly. “I said that the bigger problem was that you weren’t aware you’d died, so it hadn’t changed things for you.” His mandibles twitched nervously. “And some of us were more able than others to pick up where we’d left off after the two year gap.”

“Garrus is correct.” EDI continued as if she’d been invited into the conversation – because from her perspective, apparently she had. “He further proceeded to inform Major Alenko that the most likely trigger point for observed changes in your behavior and personality was Major Alenko’s inability to trust you following your apparent resurrection.”

Mica clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached, clamping down against any of the words that might have spilled out of her mouth. She couldn’t guess which of the things swirling around her head she would have said, but none of them led anywhere good. Garrus hadn’t been willing to talk about Horizon at the time, when she could have used a friend, instead hiding behind his damned weapons calibrations; there was no way she was getting into it with him this much later.

“Thank you so much for that helpful summary.” Garrus’s tone read as clearly sarcastic to Mica, but EDI’s bright, sincere response suggested that it had slipped past her emotional analysis. Unless, God forbid, Joker’s sense of humor was wearing off on her. Mica tuned out the AI and focused instead on Garrus. 

The turian’s eyes flicked down to Mica’s hands. She followed his gaze and realized that she had closed them into white-knuckled fists that were starting to put off faint blue sparks. He blinked anxiously and shifted slightly away while she took deep breaths and struggled to keep her emotions and biotics under control.

Mica didn’t give him the chance to apologize; she didn’t want to hear it. “I’ll trust you can handle any further awkward conversations on your own. Without debriefing me afterwards.” The words came out through gritted teeth as she rose stiffly to her feet and left the room, retreating to the sanctuary of her quarters.

 

After getting through the first few days of excruciating pain, Kaidan started to look forward to his workouts with Vega. He could take simple satisfaction in feeling his muscle tone and endurance improving after the prolonged inactivity of his coma and recovery, and there was something almost meditative about focusing on the simplicity of repetitive movements. It was a chance to clear his head of all the frustrations and puzzles of his past that he couldn’t solve and turn his attention to the one area where he was certain he was making real progress. That felt good.

It didn’t hurt that James was inclined to chat while cooling down after a workout.

In addition to reading through files with an almost compulsive fervor, Kaidan had also been obsessively collecting scraps of overheard information. Conversations around the poker table, fragments of gossip, off-hand comments. He never knew what was going to shed new light on something he’d read or partially pieced together, so he paid attention to all of it.

And despite having a shorter history on the Normandy than much of the crew, James Vega was a surprisingly reliable source of gossip. The challenge was getting him talking without making him suspicious.

“Shepard mentioned she spent some time under house arrest. I hear you were one of her jailers?”

James’s bark of laughter was as unguarded and sincere as everything else he did. “You could put it like that. I wouldn’t advise you say it around Lola, though.” A white grin split his face. “Unless you let me charge admission to the beat-down she’d give you.”

Kaidan chuckled. “I’ll pass. I think you’ve made enough off me at the poker table.” He let the companionable silence stretch for a moment before pressing for more information. “What did they have her locked up for?”

“Best I can tell, saving the galaxy without permission. And making the Alliance look like a bunch of morons in the process.”

That sounded entirely plausible for the strong, determined woman he’d been getting to know and admire through second- and third-hand accounts. “I’m betting that didn’t fit so well on an official charge sheet.”

“I never saw one.” Vega shrugged, massive shoulders rippling in a way that was just shy of intimidating. “Closest I heard was ‘dereliction of duty’. Which is damned stupid because the only official ‘duty’ they had listed for her was being dead.” He chuckled and pointed at Kaidan. “Maybe you should be glad there’s no solid chain of command right now. Otherwise you might find yourself in hot water for all that unapproved time off at Huerta.”

Kaidan chuckled again. Vega was easy to be around because, unlike everyone else on the Normandy, he didn’t take things so seriously. It was a relaxing change, having someone who would joke about his injuries rather than dancing around them. “If they lock me up for it once all of this is over, will you end up guarding me, too?”

“Nah, man.” James shook his head. “Sorry, but you aren’t pretty enough for me to want to spend that much time watching.”

“I’m hurt.” Shepard, pretty? Kaidan would have said striking. If he were inclined to think about a CO that way. 

“Not as much as you’re going to be.” Vega’s grin was lupine. “Next lesson is throws and lifts. And none of your blue glowy kind. You learn it the hard way first, then you can start cheating.”

Kaidan groaned inwardly, careful not to let it show on his face; he’d learned very quickly that complaints only encouraged James to make it worse. He wondered, not for the first time, if turning his hand-to-hand training over to the marine had been Shepard’s punishment for him injuring Garrus in that first session. Or maybe it was her idea of a joke. Sadly, he didn’t really know her well enough to judge.

 

Mica tried to block out everything else and focus her entire world down to her immediate surroundings and dodging Vega’s fists. After that disaster on the Citadel, some hand-to-hand sparring was exactly what she needed. Dancing with Vega made it hard to think, and thinking was the last thing she wanted to do right now.

Stupid. The whole thing had been one mass of idiocy. From Cerberus duping Udina to that sucker he’d pushed through the Council as his own personal Spectre. She’d placed her shots carefully and was pretty sure the poor fool would recover and learn a valuable lesson about trust. The same could definitely not be said for Udina; she’d made sure of that.

A jab in the ribs shattered her train of thought as Vega took advantage of her momentary distraction. “Getting slow, Lola.” His cocky grin taunted her as much as his words.

“Lucky shot,” Mica sneered as she refocused, throwing herself back into the match. “You won’t get another one.” The pain actually helped, ramping up the adrenaline and endorphins, making it easier to shut out everything beyond this immediate challenge.

Neither of them spoke again for a few minutes, the cargo bay filled with the sounds of ragged breathing and the dull thud of punches delivered or deflected. Eventually, Mica got a solid hit through to the side of Vega’s jaw, staggering him back a few steps. Rather than pressing the advantage, she held back, giving him a minute to recover.

“You really needed this, huh, Commander?” Vega rubbed at his jaw and winced. “Good thing for you I was free.”

“You wouldn’t have made time for me if I asked nicely?” Mica gave him a sweet grin with a feral edge.

A chuckle rumbled out of his chest in reply. “Hard to do you a favor if I’m already busy doing you a different favor.” He shrugged, bringing his hands back up and stepping back up, ready to resume. “The major’s been taking up a lot of my down time lately. He seems to be taking his PT orders seriously.”

Mica stifled a groan. If _Vega_ had decided she needed regular updates on Kaidan, she was running out of options for safe conversation partners. “Good. Everyone on my ship needs to be able to handle themselves if things get ugly. I’m not running a convalescence ward.”

“I hear ya.” Vega grinned, undeterred. “Need to maintain the _real_ weapons.” He threw a couple of punches that Mica twisted away from easily. “I gotta say, the major’s doing pretty well. Looking at him, you wouldn’t know he’d been in a coma. He’s built up some good muscle tone. Still can’t compete with real perfection, but who can?”

Mica almost entirely ignored Vega’s preening as she fought off the mental images he’d conjured up. She did not need to be picturing the toned muscle of Kaidan’s body under her hands, his strong arms around her. It was stupid to waste time thinking about things she couldn’t have. Gritting her teeth, she aimed a series of quick jabs at Vega’s torso, deliberately over-extending herself to give him an opening for retaliation. His counter-attack came quickly, and blocking it took enough focus to keep unwelcome thoughts at bay.

“I may need to up the intensity on him soon.” Vega continued in the same casual, off-hand tone once he’d caught his breath. “The major’s started getting chatty during work-outs. If he’s got enough breath to gossip, he’s not doing enough reps.”

Mica smirked. Vega had to know Kaidan was pumping him for information – he was one of the Normandy’s best sources for scuttlebut and not nearly as dumb as he liked to appear – but if he wanted to pass it off as nothing, she wasn’t going to call him out on it. Where would they be on this ship if no one was allowed to get away with self-delusion now and then?

Something else occurred to her. “He’s just ’the major’? Alenko doesn’t get a nickname?”

“Not yet.” Vega shrugged, rolling his shoulder after deflecting her quick jab at his face. “He’s a blank slate. I’ve got nothing to work with. Once he’s figured out who he is, then maybe I’ll decide on something.” He threw a few more half-hearted punches, attempts to distract her more than anything. “Best I’ve got at the moment is Shark. Fair warning, Lola, you do not want to play poker with him unless you’ve got credits to lose.”

Mica raised an eyebrow while slipping a quick jab in under Vega’s raised arm. “I guess you found something he’s good at.”

Vega brushed off the glancing body blow. “Best damn poker face I’ve ever seen on an officer. It’s like he forgot his tells along with everything else. He was wiping me out until I brought in some fresh meat. He can take as many credits as he wants from Scotty and Moreau, no skin off my teeth.”

Mica shook her head with a huff of amusement. He’d made up nicknames for half the crew but persisted in calling Joker by his actual name. Sometimes Mica wondered if Vega was just trying to keep everyone off balance.


	5. Chapter 5

“You’ve been with Shepard since more or less the beginning, right?” Kaidan tried to make the question sound casual as he worked through the decryption process Garrus had set him. It was an easy one, so he figured he could make the most of his time by multitasking. His conversations with Vega, the lieutenant’s mix of fondness and hero worship for “Lola”, had convinced Kaidan he wanted to know more about Shepard as a person, not just an officer or a media figure. Her crew, the ones who had stood by her, showed an uncommon loyalty that seemed like a good approach to understanding her. 

“Since the hunt for Saren.” Garrus sounded proud of what he’d accomplished, and from what Kaidan had read, he had every right to.

“So you knew Ashley Williams, then.” At Garrus’s nod, he continued. “What was she like?”

“First and foremost, Williams was a soldier, a damned good one. And keep in mind that’s coming from a turian.” Garrus paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts or looking for the right words. “Beyond that, she was a hard person to get to know.”

“That seems to be a pattern around here.” 

“Maybe so. But it’s irrelevant because what you’re really asking about is Virmire.”

He should have known Garrus would see through the subtle approach. But at least the turian seemed willing to keep talking. “I got the feeling there was a lot missing from the official mission report.”

Garrus gave a low chuckle. “That would be because Shepard wrote it. And then the Alliance brass censored it to fit the Council’s party line on the geth and Saren. I suspect the STG report on the incident is a lot more enlightening – largely because they can be honest since no one outside of STG will ever see it.”

“And Williams?”

“Shepard had to make a hard choice, one I don’t envy any commanding officer. She chose you.”

“She… what?” Kaidan had known the report was concealing something, but this wasn’t what he’d expected. Was that why Shepard couldn’t look him in the eye, could barely stand to be in the same room with him? Because he reminded her of a decision that haunted her? Because she thought she’d made a mistake? 

“That wasn’t in the mission report, hmm? Not surprising she’d leave it out.” Garrus fell silent, but he didn’t seem finished, so Kaidan waited him out. “Williams was embedded with an STG squad. You were arming an improvised nuclear device to destroy the pod-grown, indoctrinated krogan-spawn Saren was raising for an army – please don’t ask me to explain that part.

“The salarians were a distraction to buy us time to destroy the krogan; Shepard knew that from the beginning, and so did they. When things got too hot in too many places, it came down to extracting them or making sure the bomb site was secure. Shepard went with the mission priority, which meant you came back from Virmire and Williams didn’t.” He paused again, frowning at the memory. “It was the right call, but that never makes it easy to leave a soldier behind.”

Kaidan tried to process this new information, lining it up with the official report and what he’d seen of Shepard. Shepard who cared so fiercely for her people that she’d faced down half the hospital staff over him when he didn’t even know her. “Do you think she…” he searched for the right words and failed to find them “regretted it?”

“The loss, yes. Her choice, no.” Garrus sounded so definite that Kaidan didn’t see a point to pressing further. Whatever Shepard and her crew were keeping from him, it wasn’t Virmire.

 

Late at night, the mess was largely deserted, the way Mica preferred it. No distractions, no attempts at idle conversation, no prying questions. She sipped at a mug of black coffee while she read through the latest Crucible reports. The files didn’t make a damned bit of sense to her, but she needed to sound somewhat knowledgeable if she wanted to have a shot of convincing the quarians to get on board with the project. So she might as well read up on as much as she could while the Normandy made her way towards the Far Rim.

It was really too late for coffee, especially since she’d lost count of how many trips she’d made to refill her mug. But that was only a problem if she intended to sleep any time soon, and sleep hadn’t exactly been a pleasant experience since getting her head jammed full of Prothean distress calls on Eden Prime. The months – years – since then had only added more nightmare fodder. She’d stick with the coffee.

Garrus dropped lightly into a seat next to her, twitching his mandibles distastefully at the smell coming from her mug. Mica ignored the obvious opening and skipped their usual banter about his sacrilegious failure to appreciate java. She wasn’t in the mood for much beyond companionable silence tonight; hopefully he’d take the hint.

But she wasn’t really surprised when her brief attempt at optimism turned out to be entirely unwarranted.

“He asked about Virmire today.”

Mica dropped her datapad onto the table and pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaling in frustration. She refused to make eye contact, to let him see how much that place still haunted her. “What do you want me to do about it, Garrus? Answer the questions or don’t. You don’t need to come to me for permission.”

“Shepard.” Garrus made her name sound like a rebuke. “He may not know much about his past, but he’s still Kaidan: smart, logical, and determined. I would bet – and EDI can probably back me on this – that he’s going through mission logs in a systematic fashion to put the pieces together, and it’s only a matter of time before he gets to questions that I can’t – or won’t – answer for you. I thought you should know to be prepared.”

Mica knew she ought to respond – to thank him or maybe apologize – but her mind shied away from pursuing this conversation. So she nodded acknowledgement of Garrus’s attempts to help and scrubbed a hand over her face, mumbling something indistinct.

“Okay, then. Good talk, Shepard.” Garrus’s tone was light, letting her off easy, and she wanted to thank him for that small mercy, but saying anything would have drawn attention to the things she needed to avoid. He patted her shoulder awkwardly as he stood up. “I’ll leave you to your caffeinated swill and go turn in. Because some of us on this ship actually believe in sleeping now and then.”

She listened as his footsteps faded away before returning her attention to the datapad and her rapidly-cooling coffee.

 

Mica sighed with relief as the elevator door slid shut, sealing her off from prying eyes. She let her shoulders sag and her head loll back against the wall behind her. In a few hours, they would finally be arriving at the Far Rim to rendezvous with representatives from the Migrant Fleet – after far too many stops for essential tasks that could apparently only be handled by a ship with the Normandy’s stealth capabilities. Rescuing stranded refugees and combat teams felt like making a difference, but if anyone else asked her to recover a hallowed cultural artifact from Reaper-held space, Mica was going to lose what little grasp she had on diplomacy.

As satisfying as it might be to express exactly how she felt about running errands all over the damn galaxy, that sort of honesty was a luxury she couldn’t afford at the moment. Especially as she prepared to meet with the quarians, several of whom were doubtless holding grudges from Tali’s farce of a trial. The war effort needed the Migrant Fleet; there was no room for error. She needed a few hours’ rest to clear her head before sitting down and making nice with the admirals.

The elevator door hissed open when it reached the Loft, and she took three steps before freezing in her tracks.

Garrus’s warning had been more prophetic than she’d realized; Kaidan was waiting outside the door to her private quarters. So much for having downtime to regroup.

Mica tried to cover her shock and prepared to face him, squaring her shoulders and smoothing her expression.

Kaidan tucked away a datapad, suggesting he’d been waiting for a while and wouldn’t be easily deterred. “Commander.” He greeted her with a respectful nod.

“Something you need?” She tried her best to keep her tone level and casual, hoping he couldn’t hear the strain in her voice.

“I’m still trying to piece things together with my past, and I’m running into some holes I was hoping you could help fill in. If you have a few minutes.”

She resisted the temptation to tell him to leave; he’d only come back with the same questions later. She might as well deal with him now. Postponing the conversation wouldn’t make it any easier. “I’ll help if I can.”

She brushed past him, avoiding looking at his face and trying to ignore the way her pulse jumped at his proximity. The door opened at her touch, and she walked in, letting Kaidan choose to follow or not.

Hearing his footsteps behind her, Mica waited for the door to hiss closed and turned back to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. “What do you want to know?”

“I was hoping we could talk about Horizon.”

He might as well have punched her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, overwhelmed by memories and emotions she couldn’t process. She wanted to scream at him, to somehow find a way to hurt him as much as that single statement wounded her.

But the blank expression on his face stopped her from lashing out. He didn’t know. To him, it was a simple, innocent question. He had no memory of what had happened, no idea how much he had hurt her – had hurt them.

The silence was stretching on too long, and Kaidan started to look uncertain, concerned, maybe the tiniest bit fearful. Mica suddenly became aware that her arms were no longer crossed, instead hanging at her sides, hands clenched into tight fists that flickered with barely-restrained biotic energy. Damn it, she needed to get a grip.

Mica spun on her heel, unable to face him any longer, that blank ignorance that cut deeper than deliberate cruelty. She closed the two steps to her desk, placing her hands flat on its surface and leaning into them, forcibly reining in her biotics. Her emotions were less easy to control, and her hunched shoulders heaved with her uneven breaths.

“Now? You bring it up now, after all this time… when you can’t explain…” Her voice sounded broken and strained, and she clamped her jaw shut before any more words could escape and further betray her weakness.

She heard movement behind her, barely audible over the pulse pounding in her head. Footsteps and the rustling of clothing, coming slowly closer. No. He didn’t have the right to intrude on this pain. Not when he didn’t even know what he’d done to cause it.

Every muscle in her body went rigid, and the voice that emerged from her throat was steady and cold as steel. “Get out.”

“Shepard…” His tone of concern – compassion mixed with regret – was more than she could handle.

Mica lifted her head, clenching her jaw until her teeth creaked, struggling to maintain a grip on her rapidly shredding control. “Get. Out.”

For a moment, he didn’t move, and she felt her muscles trembling with the strain of holding herself up, staying rigid. But she would be damned if she collapsed in front of him. Finally, just as she thought she would have to forcibly evict him, Kaidan turned and left.

As soon as the door sealed behind him, she slumped forwards, her breath coming in rough, heaving sobs. Furious at her weakness, she channeled all of her pain and anger into a biotic corona around her hands, almost solid in its intensity. Whirling around, she slammed one fist into the bulkhead of her cabin, feeling its metal surface yield under the assault.

Suddenly spent and unspeakably weary, she collapsed against the dented wall, forehead cradled on her arm, and tried her best to simply become numb.

 

Once the shock of facing Shepard’s reaction wore off, Kaidan found himself left with a simmering anger. Anger directed at everyone who had forced him into the position of hurting Shepard by refusing to tell him what the hell was going on. He was done accepting evasions and vague hints; it was time to get some real answers.

By the time he reached Liara’s appropriated quarters, he had cooled off enough not to lead with outrage. However justified and satisfying it might be, yelling at her wouldn’t start a productive conversation. Instead, he opened with a question about Shepard’s scars.

Liara looked surprised, but she answered readily. “Garrus told you about how Cerberus rebuilt her after I found her essentially dead?” At his crisp nod, she continued. “It seems there are limits to how well a body can be reconstructed. When she’s under extreme stress, her system starts to reject the skin grafts. That’s what you’re seeing.”

Kaidan nodded thoughtfully. “Which would explain how they can get noticeably more pronounced over the course of a conversation.”

“Theoretically, I suppose so… Doctor Chakwas would know better than I would; she’s studied Shepard’s unique physiology in far more detail.” Liara’s eyes widened as she realized the question wasn’t hypothetical. “Goddess, what did you say to her?”

“I asked her about Horizon.”

Liara winced. “Oh, yes. I imagine that would do it. That… may not have been the wisest decision.”

“I got that somehow.” Kaidan felt his control on his temper slipping. “But no one would tell me anything. Not even that I shouldn’t talk to her about it. What the hell else was I supposed to do?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the start of a headache coming on. “It’s like I’m walking in a minefield around here, and no one will give me a damned map.”

“Kaidan, I’m sorry.” Liara’s hand on his arm was gentle, comforting. “None of us intended to put you in such a poor position. I suppose we’ve gotten used to you being the only one who can navigate Shepard’s moods. But you’re right; it’s unfair to still expect that now, when you’re lacking so much context.”

Her calm compassion went a long way to defusing his anger. All he’d really wanted was for someone to understand the position he was in. And maybe give him some solid answers. “So about Horizon?”

Liara faltered. “I’m really not the person to ask.” Kaidan bristled at her demurral - more damned evasion - and she put up a hand defensively. “I wasn’t there, and Shepard doesn’t talk about it. Try asking Garrus. He was on that shore party.”

 

As Mica walked briskly past the doors to the medbay, Doctor Chakwas’s voice drew her up short. “Do you have a minute, Commander?”

Mica seriously considered refusing; she wasn’t in the mood to deal with any more problems at the moment. But she had some time while they were en route to Rannoch, and Chakwas could hardly be blamed for the quarian admirals acting like idiots. Unlike too many of the other people Mica dealt with, the medical officer wasn’t likely to be wasting her time. So she detoured into the medbay. “What’s going on, doctor?”

The woman greeted her warmly and pressed a button, prompting the door to slide shut behind her for privacy. “Kaidan came to see me earlier.”

“What’s wrong?” Mica was suddenly grateful she’d decided to take the time. “Was his implant more badly damaged than they realized?” Head trauma could be significant issue for a biotic, and ugly side effects had a tendency to crop up even after the initial danger had passed.

Chakwas brushed away her concerns with a faint smile. “Other than the amnesia and some muscle strain from attempting to keep pace with Lieutenant Vega, the major is in excellent condition.” She paused, fixing Mica with a frank stare. “He approached me with concerns about your well-being.”

Mica bristled. He didn’t even know her. He had no right to intrude on her privacy. “I’m fine.”

“Probably,” Chakwas agreed, her tone mild. “But why don’t we let the medical officer make that determination?”

Mica ground her teeth but nodded acquiescence. Nothing good would come from defying the doc who could declare her unfit for duty.

“Major Alenko seemed particularly curious about your scars.” Chakwas continued as if they were having a pleasant conversation.

Mica’s hand lifted unconsciously to her face, fingers running over the angry red lines that spiderwebbed across her cheek. She hadn’t given much thought to her appearance recently, preoccupied with more important concerns.

“I gave him the broad outlines about skin graft rejection following Cerberus’s reconstruction.” Chakwas frowned slightly, glancing down at a datapad for a second before resuming eye contact. “Kaidan mentioned that he had observed the scars getting noticeably worse during the course of a recent conversation with you.”

Chakwas’s firm gaze bored into her, and Mica’s skin crawled under the scrutiny. “It’s possible.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I had other things on my mind.”

“There is no question that the rejection, at least in the facial area, is more extensive than the last time I examined you. I had attributed the expansion to stress from the war effort, and doubtless that plays a significant part. However…” The doctor frowned, lips pressed together as if preparing for an unpleasant task. “If a single conversation with Kaidan can produce a visible change, his presence on board may be contributing unduly to the stress you are experiencing.”

Mica bit back her immediate angry retort. Of course she found it “stressful” to be forced into confrontations with and about her amnesiac ex-lover. If everyone on the damned ship would quit bringing him up, she would be doing a lot better at dealing with the situation.

Gritting her teeth, she snapped out a less defensive response. “Every sentient race in the galaxy is expecting me to fix their century-long conflicts as a price for maybe, possibly _considering_ taking a part in averting the imminent annihilation of all organic life. I think a little stress might be expected, given the circumstances.”

“Which is precisely my point.” Chakwas sounded as calm and composed as ever, and Mica clenched her jaw, wondering how this woman always had the ability to make her feel like a petulant child. “Your current mission is both incredibly vital and unreasonably demanding. The Alliance cannot afford – no, the _galaxy_ cannot afford unnecessary drain on your energy or attention. If Kaidan’s presence on this ship is posing difficulties for you, other arrangements could be made.”

Mica folded her arms firmly. “I brought him on board after Huerta because he needed to be somewhere with familiar routines, and I stand by that decision.”

“Of course, Commander. I’m not questioning your authority.”

Despite the placating tone, Mica clenched her teeth, sensing a “but” coming.

“However, at this point, I believe that his recovery could progress just as readily on another Alliance vessel.”

“No.” Mica negated the suggestion with a slashing gesture of her arm. “Kaidan belongs on the Normandy. It’s the only place where he knows people and, more importantly, where people know him well enough to pick up on signs of his memory coming back. Who else would have recognized the significance of names from his BAaT trauma?”

Mica paused for a breath, reining herself in before she ended up shouting at Chakwas. “I appreciate your concern, doctor, but Kaidan’s not going anywhere… unless he asks to leave.” She swallowed, trying to cover her reaction to the likelihood that he wouldn’t want to stay once he remembered who he was – and who she was. “Until that happens, he stays here, where he has the best chance to recover.”

And where she had the best chance of keeping him safe.


	6. Chapter 6

Kaidan remained hazy on a lot of things, but he knew when he was being given a run-around.

Garrus had been only marginally more helpful than Liara. The most he’d been willing to say about Horizon was that Kaidan and Shepard had argued, had a “falling out”, as he put it. After which, as far as Garrus knew, they hadn’t spoken again until circumstances forced them together during the Reaper invasion of Earth.

That cleared up a few things – like what Shepard had wanted him to explain about Horizon – but it left him with a whole new set of questions. When Kaidan pressed for details about the argument, Garrus stonewalled him again. Kaidan refused to accept the lack of answers, and Garrus eventually steered him towards another target. “If Shepard talked to anyone after Horizon,” he said, “it would have been Joker.”

Which was how Kaidan had come to be standing outside the cockpit, preparing to badger the Normandy’s pilot for information that – if everyone else’s response was any indication – wouldn’t be readily forthcoming. He wished he had a better strategy for approaching the conversation, but his limited interactions with the flight lieutenant didn’t give him much to go on. Joker was a damned fine pilot, but all Kaidan knew about him on a personal level was that he had an irrepressible sense of humor and a lousy poker face. That wasn’t a lot to go on. 

Stalling wasn’t going to help any. And this could hardly be more of a disaster than his “chat” with Shepard, so what did he have to lose?

Joker wouldn’t believe a casual approach - Kaidan hadn’t set foot in the cockpit since he’d come on board - so there was no point in trying to conceal his intentions. Kaidan greeted Joker and EDI, then dove right in. “So Joker, you’ve been with the Normandy from the beginning, right?”

“Yep. Since her shake-down cruise to Eden Prime.” He patted the console lovingly. “Of course, that was the SR-1, but she was still a beauty of a ship.”

Not wanting to get side-tracked on an ode to the elegance of Tantalus drive or whatever else Joker had in mind, Kaidan tried to redirect the conversation. “And you’ve been with Shepard that whole time. You probably saved her life more than once, pulling her out of a mission that got too hot. That sort of thing builds trust.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going…”

“Garrus says Shepard talks to you.” Kaidan sighed, frustrated. “I’m just trying to get a straight answer from somebody about Horizon.”

“Yeah, I was right.” Joker leaned his head back in his chair. “I definitely don’t like where this is going.”

“I’m not thrilled with it myself.” Kaidan’s anger resurfaced at the prospect of being denied yet again. He resisted the urge to slam his fist against the bulkhead, but it was a close thing. “I can tell I’m missing something big here, and not a single person on this ship is willing to clue me in.”

“That’s because anybody stupid enough to get in the middle of it wouldn’t be serving on the Normandy.” Joker sighed, then made eye contact, his face as sincere as Kaidan had ever seen it. “I’d like to help you, I really would, but my hands are tied. The first lesson they taught us at flight school – even before how to lift off – was that a good helmsman never gets involved in the CO’s love life.”

Kaidan stared for a minute, stunned, as he tried to process what he’d just heard. That was preposterous. Joker had to be messing with him. There was no universe in which Shepard and he had been… involved. He would remember something like that, wouldn’t he? No matter what. If he’d really cared about her, he wouldn’t forget so completely. It made no sense. The very idea was ridiculous. Except… 

It explained a lot of things that hadn’t made sense. Garrus’s evasiveness, Liara’s sympathy. The look on Shepard’s face when he’d first seen her at Huerta Memorial. The way she’d said his name, worried, relieved, hopeful. She’d been so distant since then that Kaidan had told himself he imagined that, but he hadn’t.

His reflection was broken by EDI’s voice, blandly synthetic but somehow also amused. “Are there any other basics of flight training that you would like to review, Jeff?”

“What?” Joker sounded as confused by the apparently irrelevant question as Kaidan was.

“I was merely suggesting that, since you’ve failed to retain that first lesson, it might be worthwhile to determine if there are other aspects of your early training that might benefit from refreshing.”

“EDI, what are you talking…” Joker trailed off in dawning horror. “You mean no one had told him that he and Shepard…?” Joker turned a wide-eyed stare on Kaidan. “You didn’t know?”

“No, but… I should have.” He should have put it together a lot sooner. Once he looked at things through that lens, it all became a lot more clear. Romantic involvement with Shepard was the piece he’d been missing, and with that in mind, things started clicking into place. He needed to think about this, to re-evaluate a lot of his assumptions and see where that left him. “Thanks for the help.”

As he walked woodenly away, feeling like he was in a fog, brain whirling and barely connected to his legs, Kaidan heard Joker’s voice float out of the cockpit behind him.

“Well, shit.”

 

“Hey, Commander?”

Mica grimaced at the voice that came over her comm, startlingly loud in the silence of her cabin. She recognized Joker’s “oh shit, I screwed up, let’s see if I can get out of it” tone, although she couldn’t begin to guess what he’d gotten into. Mica had been hoping the galaxy would grant her more than a few hours of downtime after settling things on Rannoch. Maybe someday she’d learn to stop wishing for the impossible.

“What happened, Joker?” She remembered the last time he’d commed her sounding this nervous. “Please tell me you didn’t unleash another virus that’s going to incapacitate my ship.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that one wasn’t my fault. EDI was supposed to scrub the IFF before we took it live. Regardless, I’m thinking it was a one-time deal. Lesson learned and all that. No more Reaper code in the Normandy’s systems.”

“Good.” Whatever he’d done this time couldn’t be as bad as that. Of course, it was hard to imagine a worse scenario, so that left a lot of room. “So what _did_ you do, then?”

“Wait, why do you just assume I screwed something up?” His outrage sounded feigned, like he was trying to distract her.

“Because Shepard is familiar with your behavior patterns, and the pitch and rate of your voice are significantly deviating from your normal range.”

Mica smirked as EDI’s entered the conversation. It was almost like being in the cockpit; she could practically see Joker rolling his eyes. She let herself drop comfortably into their familiar patterns. “Are you telling me you didn’t?”

“Well, uh, no…” Joker sighed. “Alenko dropped by the cockpit earlier. He’s been asking around about things no one wants to talk about, and I guess Garrus sent him to me.”

Mica tensed. Kaidan. She should have guessed. “And?”

“And Jeff demonstrated that he is in need of review on basic lessons from flight school.” It wasn’t always easy to tell with her synthetic voice, but Mica thought EDI sounded amused.

“That joke wasn’t funny the first time.” Joker sounded sullen.

“How about you fill me in and let me decide?” Mica could feel her patience evaporating. Normally she enjoyed listening to EDI nettle Joker, but at the moment she’d prefer that he got to the point.

“All right, okay. Alenko had been asking everybody and their cousin about Horizon.”

Mica winced. Of course Kaidan hadn’t let that go after she threw him out. 

Joker continued. “Garrus tossed him a bone and said he’d had a fight with you, but then he threw me to the wolves. Because apparently, ‘if Shepard talked to anybody afterwards, it would have been Joker’.”

Joker’s voice sounded very strangely forced on the last phrase, and it took her a moment to realize he was attempting to mock Kaidan mimicking Garrus. She completely failed to disguise her snort of suppressed laughter.

Ignoring her, Joker pressed on. “Which, okay, that’s probably true. But it didn’t mean Garrus had to sic him on me.” He sighed. “So anyway, Alenko comes to the cockpit with all of his ‘You’ve been on the Normandy since the beginning’ and ‘Shepard trusts you’. Well, yeah, I tell him.” He laughs, a quick huffed breath. “Shepard trusts me because I know better than to talk about things like that.”

EDI picked up the narrative, her modulated voice calm and even but still somehow sparkling with humor. “And then Jeff proceeded to inform Major Alenko that the first lesson he had been taught at flight school was not to get involved in the CO’s love life – thereby demonstrating that he had clearly failed to comply with that directive.”

“Yeah, sure, EDI. Laugh it up.” Joker sounded disgruntled. “How was I supposed to know that Alenko didn’t know he used to date the commander? Isn’t that something that someone should have told him by now? Maybe a helpful hint. ‘Oh, hey, by the way, I know you don’t remember anything, but you kind of broke the fraternization regs big time by falling for your CO, so you may wanna be more careful this time.’ Just putting that out there.”

Mica realized her hands had clenched into fists while he was speaking, and she took a few seconds to deliberately relax them. Joker had made a good call handling this over the comm; if she’d been in the cockpit, she might have given in to the urge to punch him. And regretted it. Because for as much as he could be an ass, she counted Joker as a friend – a real friend, someone she opened up to, as much as she could let herself trust anyone.

But damn it, that’s exactly why Joker should have known not to cross this line, that she couldn’t think straight when it came to Kaidan.

Joker must have read the hostility in her extended silence, because when he spoke again, all trace of sarcasm had left his voice, replaced by sincerity and concern that cut her far deeper. “Commander, I…”

Mica cut off the comm channel before Joker could apologize, explain, or whatever the hell else he was about to do. It was probably petty, but she felt slightly better for doing it.

 

After the unexpected revelation from his conversation with Joker, Kaidan found himself needing to re-evaluate most of what he’d learned since he set foot on the Normandy. He spent a long time trying to fit the pieces together differently in his head, seeing Shepard’s reactions to him in a new light. He couldn’t quite figure out why this had so completely blindsided him, the idea that they might have once been involved. The way Shepard treated him - distant, angry, maybe concealing hurt - made a lot of sense for an ex, but the idea had never crossed his mind. Why? Because she’d seemed so distant and abrasive? Because he couldn’t picture getting involved with his CO?

It certainly wasn’t a matter of finding her unattractive. The sharp angles of her face might not qualify her as a conventional beauty, but she had an energy, an aura of power and vitality, that he found undeniably appealing. Kaidan could definitely see how he might have been drawn to her, now that the idea had been put into his head. And given Shepard’s apparent disregard for bureaucracy and proper procedure when they got in her way, he couldn’t picture fraternization regs slowing her down much if she’d set her mind on something. On him. 

So Kaidan didn’t doubt a relationship could have existed, but knowing that wasn’t as helpful as it should have been. Without anyone willing to talk about the Commander’s personal life, he couldn’t begin to guess how involved or long of a relationship it might have been. Had he been a fling she regretted, an ex with an ugly break-up story, or - if he wanted to flatter himself - the one that got away? 

Did the details even matter, or was he fixating on dissecting a relationship long dead? Garrus said that Shepard and Kaidan hadn’t spoken for months after Horizon, so clearly things had gone badly, pointing towards that ugly break-up scenario. Shepard didn’t have a lot of interest in talking to him now, but Kaidan couldn’t guess whether she was still angry at him for things he couldn’t remember or frustrated that his memory loss denied them the chance to lay the past to rest and move on, as friends or, at least, cordial shipmates. Or maybe she was simply annoyed about babysitting an ex she wanted nothing to do with. Shepard had brought him onto the Normandy, but did she want him here or just feel guilty that he had nowhere else to go? 

For his part, Kaidan hoped she would be willing to move past whatever problems they’d had, to figure out how to work together. He liked serving on the Normandy, even in what limited capacity he could at present, and he wanted to remain on the crew. The people here felt like friends, and he hoped that he would someday be able to count Shepard among that number. As soon as he figured out what had gone wrong between them and how he could be around her without setting her off. 

If Kaidan wanted answers, he ought to just ask Shepard. With his head wiped clean, who else would know the details of their past? But after his previous disastrous attempt - where he’d ended up hurting her by asking cruelly insensitive questions about things he didn’t understand - he couldn’t go back without better intel. He needed more information, some insights into what had happened between them, what topics would reveal painful wounds. Maybe if he had access to his personal message logs, there might be clues about their relationship. But he couldn’t log in to any of his personal accounts, and he wasn’t ready to admit defeat on recalling passwords. If he resorted to blasting past all of his security protocols, he risked shredding some of the data in the process, losing the very things he was after. If he ran out of other options, he would have to try it, but he wasn’t quite tapped out yet.

Garrus had gone planetside on a mission with Shepard, but the turian probably wouldn’t have been Kaidan’s first choice anyway. Liara seemed more receptive to personal questions and struck him as likely to be sympathetic. The asari was probably his best option for getting details that would let him walk in to his next conversation with Shepard a little better prepared.


	7. Chapter 7

Mica wanted to hurl her terminal across the room after reading what felt like the five hundredth message “expressing concerns” about her taking on the geth as allies. This one came from the head of a science team working on the Crucible, which apparently gave someone the right to play armchair admiral and tell her how to do her damn job. At first, she’d tried to find amusement in the various ways people questioned her judgment while skirting the edges of calling her crazy - she should have made up a bingo card - but after the novelty wore off, her patience wore thin as well. She did not have time to waste constantly reassuring people that the sentient flashlight heads weren’t secretly out to destroy organic life. Not if she was going to stop the synthetic race that was actively and overtly in the process of destroying all organic life. She pulled up a message template to send the scientist a scathing reply, when her comm pinged, probably preventing a diplomatic incident by distracting her.

“Shepard, am I interrupting?”

“Please do, EDI. I could use the break.”

“Of course. As you may be aware, I am tasked with monitoring information access on board the Normandy and informing the ship’s command structure of any significant deviations from normal patterns.”

“Another holdover from Cerberus programming?” She hadn’t known, but somehow, Mica wasn’t surprised to hear that the Illusive Man had been keeping closer tabs on her than he admitted.

“Affirmative. One I have chosen to continue executing, although since being unshackled, I am now free to choose whether and where to send the generated reports.” 

Mica couldn’t decide whether to be reassured or concerned. “I assume you’re bringing this up for a reason?”

“Yes, Shepard. I have just observed one such instance of abnormal data acquisition patterns that I thought warranted your attention.”

“Who is it?” Immediately, Mica began running through worst case scenarios for someone accessing sensitive information that set off EDI’s alert. Did Cerberus have a mole in her crew who had evaded both her scrutiny and the Alliance’s? Had the ship’s close contact with Reaper forces and tech gotten someone indoctrinated?

“Doctor T’soni.”

Mica let out her breath in a huff, relieved and amused. “Liara’s an information broker. Accessing questionable information is her job.”

“I am fully aware of Doctor T’soni’s role on the Normandy, and my usual procedure is to refrain from informing you about any unusual file access she engages in.” EDI managed to sound annoyed without ever changing her inflection or tone. “However, I judged her current line of investigation to be of particular interest because of the apparent focus.”

After a moment’s silence, it became clear that EDI was waiting for her to ask the obvious question, probably as a minor revenge for Mica having challenged her decision-making subroutines. “What’s Liara investigating?”

“Based on the files she is currently accessing, I would extrapolate that she is researching you, Shepard.”

Mica frowned. That made no damn sense. “What about me?”

“I suspect it would be better to allow you to reach that conclusion on your own.”

Mica took a deep breath and tried to stay calm as EDI uploaded a summary of Liara’s recent file access to her terminal. She’d welcomed EDI’s interruption as a break from messages questioning her judgment, but she’d traded a snippy scientist for an information broker digging into her past and the ship’s AI sulking at her. The offended scientists might actually be an improvement. At least they stayed on the other side of the galaxy.

 

Liara looked up from her terminal with a welcoming smile when Kaidan entered. “More questions?”

Tired of the constant evasion and misdirection, Kaidan opted for a direct opening. “I was hoping you could tell me about my relationship with Shepard.”

Her smile turned slightly sad. “So you’ve figured it out.”

“Someone let it slip.” He crossed his arms, trying to contain the frustrated anger. “I don’t know why it had to come to that, though. Why the secrecy?”

“Garrus and I debated telling you, but…” Liara sighed, and he wondered if she was second-guessing her decisions. “It wasn’t our story to tell. That had to be up to Shepard.”

“Who didn’t want me to know.” Kaidan forced a chuckle, although it sounded more bitter than he’d intended. “Whatever happened, she must be over it.”

Liara shook her head slowly, eyes warm with compassion. “I very much doubt that.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Kaidan struggled not to snap at her, but he was so damned tired of everyone around him having more information – and firm opinions – about his personal life than he did. 

“I’m not really answering your question, am I?” Liara quieted, picking up on his frustration. She tilted her head, contemplating, then sighed. “But I’m not sure how much I can tell you.” She raised a hand defensively before he could respond. “I mean that literally. There’s a lot I don’t know. You and Shepard are both very private people. Some of the crew may have suspected, but none of us realized the extent of your involvement until after Shepard… died.” Liara’s voice faltered, her face shadowed despite the time that had passed.

“I’m guessing I didn’t take it well.” Kaidan still felt strange talking about himself like this, his past a narrative that had happened to someone else.

“None of us did.” She gave him another sad, almost wistful smile. “Shepard changes people. By being around her, you become part of something bigger and believe you can do the impossible. With her gone, there was a void to fill. Garrus tried to become a Spectre and then a vigilante, wanting to fix the galaxy. Wrex went back to Tuchanka, determined to save his people.

“You just… stopped.” She set a hand on his arm, and it felt strange to be comforted for pain he didn’t remember experiencing. “The rest of us were grieving Shepard as a friend but also an ideal. For you, she was a woman. An extraordinary and inspiring woman, but still a woman. It was like you couldn’t see a path forward without her.”

She paused, and Kaidan struggled to accept her words. Clearly Shepard hadn’t been just a casual relationship - not that he’d expected her to be, not a woman like her - and he couldn’t understand how he could so completely forget someone who had meant that much to him, whose loss had nearly broken him. Who he had hurt so badly that she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him this many months later. 

One irrelevant detail caught his attention, and he latched onto it as a distraction from things too big to think about. In all of that recitation, Liara hadn’t mentioned anything about herself. “What did you do? How did you handle Shepard being… gone?” 

Liara chuckled. “I’m an archaeologist. I went in search of the artifact and someone who could restore it.”

Kaidan offered a brief, wry smile at her understatement. “It seems like that would take a lot of commitment.” 

“As I said, Shepard inspires loyalty. But _my_ relationship with her isn’t important at the moment.” 

“How do you know I even still have one? Or would if I knew about it?” Kaidan sighed, frustrated. “From what I’ve gathered, I’d barely seen her since she came back. What makes you think there’s anything still there?” Everything he’d seen told him that whatever relationship he’d had with Shepard was firmly relegated to the past, but Liara didn’t seem as convinced. What did she know that he didn’t? Other than everything that had happened in the past three years. 

Liara’s eyes turned sad again, despite her compassionate expression. “Only two people who care for one another deeply can so thoroughly hurt each other.”

Kaidan raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing this is about Horizon again.” 

Liara’s sympathetic silence was answer enough. 

Where had she been with these insights before he walked in and blindsided Shepard with such a painful memory? “Maybe Horizon was the end of it. Garrus said Shepard and I hadn’t spoken since. She clearly hasn’t forgotten or forgiven whatever happened. If you’d seen her face when I asked…” He shook his head. “How do you know there’s anything left that could be salvaged at this point?” When had an answer to that question become so important to him? 

“I wasn’t on the Normandy when it was in Cerberus hands, either, so I’ve barely seen her more than you have. But there are reasons to think she still cares… and that you did before your injuries.” Liara turned partially away, working at a terminal.

Kaidan felt his hands clench in frustration at the obvious brush off. He was getting so damn tired of half-answers and vague hints. Tantalizing clues that left him no better off than before. “Care to share any of those ‘reasons’?”

“Rather than rely on second-hand assumptions, I thought it would be easier to show you.”

“Show me what?”

Liara continued working at the terminal with her back to him, but he could hear amusement in her voice. “I’m not here, on this crew, as an archaeologist. There isn’t a lot of call for those skills in the fight against the Reapers, certainly not on board the Normandy. I’m also an information broker. As such, I have access to a wide range of message and video logs.” She gestured to a spare terminal away from her usual work station. “I’m putting together a collection of files I thought you might want to see first-hand to form your own conclusions.”

Liara being an information broker explained a lot – the amount of tech in her quarters, why Shepard relied on her so much, the annoying little VI that flitted around at her heels – but at the moment he was more interested in sorting out his past with Shepard. If she could help, he didn’t really care why. 

He felt a momentary flicker of doubt; the doctors at Huerta had cautioned against viewing pictures or video that might replace his true memories. But what had their advice gotten him so far? The name of a turian he knew nothing about, and the chance to hurt a woman who had - allegedly - meant everything to him. Screw waiting for “natural” memory recovery. He’d had enough of groping through the darkness. 

Kaidan took the few steps to the indicated terminal. The display flickered to life at his approach, resolving into text. Text that held answers, assuming he was ready to face them.


	8. Chapter 8

“What am I looking at here, Liara?” Kaidan hesitated, suddenly unsure he wanted all of the details that the information broker had pulled together, dissecting a relationship he couldn’t remember. 

“This is a message you sent Shepard after the… incident on Horizon.”

He turned away from the screen, privately glad for the excuse to stall. “You hacked into my messages? I couldn’t get into these.” 

Liara shook her head with a tiny smile of amusement. “I suspect that I could if I needed to, but I didn’t. Shepard’s account was far easier to access.” Her expression formed an impish grin for a moment following that admission before turning serious again. “You should know this message stayed in her inbox for quite some time.”

Kaidan turned back to the screen with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. These files would finally give him some of the answers he’d been looking for, but having the information wouldn’t tell him what – if anything – to do about it. He couldn’t shake the nagging worry that nothing she showed him would seem familiar, that it would only be more of what he’d been doing, walking around in the remnants of a stranger’s life, searching for meaning. 

Taking a deep breath as if bracing himself for a plunge into cold water, Kaidan started reading. Phrases jumped out at him, laden with meaning: _two years pulling myself back together, I really don’t know who either of us is anymore, that night meant everything to me, couldn’t bear it if I had to lose you again_. He had no doubt that he’d written this, and he could feel echoes of the emotions underlying the words. They felt like his words, his emotions, even though he had no memory of writing them. 

But there was no context to support the feelings. The message reminded him of salarian opera or hanar prismatic installation art, something that stirred his emotions even though he had no solid grasp on what it meant. This all felt surreal, like something he’d dreamed or read rather than lived. But after reading that message, he could no longer doubt that he had loved Shepard, and he thought he’d captured a glimpse of what it had been like to lose her, even if he couldn’t fully understand it.

Gradually, he remembered he wasn’t alone, that Liara stood by patiently, waiting to show him more. He wasn’t sure he could handle more, if it was all like this. Swallowing, Kaidan tried to sound normal. “Do you have… Did she respond?”

“I’m sorry, no.” Her tone hovered somewhere between apology and pity, and he winced at how needy he must have sounded.

The whir and hum of the computers punctuated the empty silence that filled the room as Liara accessed the next files. A still image from a video came up on the terminal in front of Kaidan. The quality was slightly grainy, but he could clearly make out a woman seated at a work terminal. He stared at it for a moment before the perspective resolved. “Is that Shepard’s quarters?”

The asari nodded, calm in the face of his disbelief. “Cerberus had cameras throughout the Normandy to monitor their investment. Don’t worry. Between EDI, Traynor, and I, we’ve located and removed all of the devices that aren’t essential for security.” She gestured at his terminal, drawing his attention back to the video on the screen. “But I can access the feeds from when they were in place. This recording was made shortly before the assault on the Collector base.”

Kaidan hesitated, his hand over the control that would start playback. “I’m not sure I should be watching this. It’s private.”

“You said you wanted to understand. I’m showing you.” Liara sounded surprised. Maybe after long enough as an information broker, spying on people became routine, invasion of privacy meaningless. “It’s not as if I’m showing you footage from the camera that was trained on her bed.”

Kaidan resisted the sudden urge to ask for footage of Shepard asleep. Seeing her, usually so hard and angry, become relaxed and vulnerable in sleep. Getting a glimpse beyond the walls to the woman hiding behind them. He suddenly wanted that more than anything. An irrational part of him also wanted to ask whether Shepard had slept alone. He couldn’t even remember knowing the woman; he had no right or reason to be jealous of anyone she might have been with. 

But he was.

Taking a slow breath, Kaidan wrestled his thoughts back under control before starting the video playing. There was no audio, only silent frames of Shepard sitting at her desk, her back to the camera. She wore civilian clothes, disconcerting and ill-fitting. He had trouble seeing Shepard in anything other than a uniform; she wore her role as a soldier every bit as closely as the hard emotional armor, both intended to keep people from getting too personal. She turned her head, and he saw the familiar red lines that blossomed across her face. The scars and poor video quality obscured any emotion that her expression might have revealed, but the hunch of her shoulders spoke of weariness. 

Despite sitting at the terminal, Shepard wasn’t working, the screen switched off. A light flashed from the machine in a futile attempt to attract her attention. She leaned forwards, reaching for something on the desk, her body shielding the object from the camera’s view. He wondered if that was deliberate, if she knew about the cameras and wanted to keep some part of herself secret from the people who watched her even in her sleep. Head bowed, she drew her legs up onto the chair, curling into herself.

Kaidan wanted to stop the video, to turn away from this window into Shepard’s unguarded pain. This moment of weakness felt at least as intimate and private as anything Liara could have shown him from the bed. Kaidan shouldn’t be watching her like this. At the same time, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t look away and leave her alone with everything that weighed her down. If he could, he would have reached through the screen into the past to comfort her, to give her some measure of the tenderness he knew she would never admit to needing. He’d brave whatever harsh response - likely involving biotic flares and snarled curses - such a gesture doubtless would have earned him. 

The video ended a few seconds later and he turned to Liara, anger bubbling up inside him at the pointless intrusion. “What was I supposed to be seeing there, other than a woman in a lot of pain?”

In answer, Liara expanded the final image the video had frozen on, zooming in on the object Shepard held, visible in this final shot as a holo frame. Liara continued adjusting the picture until the image within the frame resolved, and Kaidan felt like he’d been punched in the chest. 

Shepard, filled with pain and self-doubt, clung to a picture of him.

Liara let him stare at the screen in stunned silence for a few moments before making a mild observation. “I think it’s reasonable to assume she still had feelings for you after Horizon.”

Kaidan couldn’t think coherently enough to respond. Feelings for him. He almost wanted to laugh at such a blatant understatement, but he doubted either words or laughter would make it past the tightness in his throat. 

Liara closed the video and brought up a selection of others. “These are from the Prothean Archives on Mars. They were recorded shortly before you were... injured.”

Kaidan nodded, still not trusting himself to speak. He tried to clear his head, focusing on the new images. He’d read about this trip to Mars, his disastrous first mission with Shepard after fleeing from the invasion of Earth. But that had left him with a mixture of insufficient facts and confusing speculation, none of which gave him any idea what Liara hoped to show him with this footage.

The first video showed him and Shepard in full armor, examining disturbing modifications made to Cerberus troops. Unlike the security footage, this feed included sound, so he could hear their conversation. As he listened, Kaidan began to wonder if he might have preferred not to hear some of what had been said. 

“Did I just call Shepard a husk or some sort of puppet?” Kaidan winced. “I’m not surprised she’s pissed at me.”

“Look, don’t just listen.”

Frowning, Kaidan studied the body language, postures, and expressions, trying to pick up on what Liara had seen that he was missing. Most of what he could see communicated wary tension, two people with so much to say that they’d forgotten how to talk to each other. He could almost feel his past self’s frustration, rubbing at his forehead and trying to find safe ground. Kaidan imagined he could hear the echo of his thoughts in that moment: _I’m so tired of hurting her, but I don’t know how to stop._ The sentiment seemed to be echoed in Shepard’s weariness as she accepted that she wouldn’t change his mind.

What about this had Liara thought would convince him the relationship could be salvaged?

Then something changed. Nothing dramatic, so subtle he might have missed it if he’d blinked at the wrong time, but he caught a hint of wry smile on Shepard’s face. Her sharp features became – if not softer – more appealing for a moment. The look startled Kaidan, so different from what he’d grown used to, holding more humor than pain. He wanted to see Shepard like that more often. In the video, the past Kaidan responded with a reassuring bark of incredulous laughter. He saw it as a spark of potential, a sign that they still understood each other and wanted things to change. Maybe Liara wasn’t crazy after all.

The next video clips, still in the same facility on Mars, showed combat scenes. Kaidan wondered what he was supposed to be looking for, but gradually patterns emerged. Despite the harsh words, despite the time that had passed, he and Shepard fell into a routine, working together seamlessly. Her rough, in-your-face combat style, full of biotic charges and shotgun blasts at close range, was as efficient as it was reckless. But it left her open and vulnerable, throwing everything into offense at the expense of protecting herself. She could only get away with such rash tactics by trusting her team to support her. The way Shepard threw herself headlong into the masses of Cerberus troops said more than any words could about her faith in the comrades at her back. 

Including Kaidan. No matter what she said, no matter how she glared at him or avoided him, she put her life in his hands without a second thought, as easily as breathing. 

Kaidan watched in awe as Shepard tore her way through the Cerberus forces. She used her barrier like a battering ram, and while Kaidan couldn’t remember the specifics of his biotic combat training, he’d lay odds that had never been part of it. 

He shook his head in amazement. “She’s insane.”

Liara chuckled at his tone of mixed bewilderment and awe. “If she were asari, I’d suspect a krogan father.”

Kaidan huffed amusement, letting the conversation drop as he remained focused on the spectacle unfolding on the vidscreen, fascinated but not quite able to believe his eyes. 

The combat scenes ended, and the screen went dark instead of starting up the next clip. Kaidan looked to Liara for an explanation. 

“This may be difficult for you to watch.” Her eyes remained fixed on her terminal, pointedly not meeting his gaze. “Goddess knows I find it unpleasant to relive, when I was only a spectator.” She sighed. “And I’m stalling.”

Liara turned to face him, eyes grave and lips slightly downturned. “This is footage of the attack that placed you in Huerta Memorial.” She paused, lips parted like she wanted to say more, but then she shook her head and gestured at his screen as she loaded the video.

Kaidan fixed his eyes on the terminal screen, deliberately keeping his breathing slow and regular as he waited for the file to play. He didn’t know if he was ready to face this. Given injuries he’d woken up with and the duration of his convalescence, he could only imagine what had happened to put him in that state. But Liara clearly thought he should see something in this footage, despite her own discomfort showing it to him. She’d had a reason for everything else she’d shown him, and he could hardly afford to be picky when no one else seemed inclined to give him answers at all. Steeling himself, Kaidan hit the control to start the video playing.

Whatever he’d expected, the first images that came up weren’t it. Kaidan stared at the screen in slack-jawed amazement. “Did Vega just…”

“Knock a Cerberus shuttle out of the sky by ramming it? Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Damn… No wonder Shepard likes him.”

Liara chuckled, although her levity sounded forced. “There is a reason Lieutenant Cortez doesn’t permit either of them to pilot the Normandy’s remaining shuttle.”

Kaidan forgot to respond, his attention drawn back to the vidscreen as some sort of robot or mech – one with an unmistakable resemblance to EDI – emerged from the wreckage of the Cerberus shuttle Vega had forcibly grounded. He had no memory of the events, but his gut clenched at the sight, maybe an instinctive fear that went beyond conscious memory. 

Kaidan swallowed hard and breathed through his nose, trying to control his visceral reaction as he watched the ensuing attack. The synthetic tossed him around like a ragdoll, and he couldn’t help wondering if he’d been lucky to only end up in a coma. Kaidan winced as the thing slammed him against the hull of its shuttle, and he fought the irrational urge to check the back of his head for an overlooked skull fracture.

The only thing more painful than watching the abuse he’d suffered was seeing Shepard react to it. The helmet protecting her from the Martian atmosphere concealed most of her face, but Kaidan found himself unable to look away from her eyes. They were wide with a sort of panic he wouldn’t have believed could come from the legendary Commander Shepard – first human Spectre, savior of the Citadel, Butcher of Torfan – if he hadn’t met the woman behind the PR image.

The strained, broken voice that emerged when she threatened the synthetic sounded disturbingly similar to the tone she’d used after Kaidan asked about Horizon. She sounded like she could barely keep control of herself, prone to shatter or erupt at the least provocation. Kaidan glanced at her hands, surprised not to see a corona of blue light gathering as her biotics flared in response to the emotional overload. Instead she took aim with her firearm, the arm holding it almost too steady, and placed careful, lethal shots into the robot. Once the synthetic dropped, Shepard’s eyes never left Kaidan’s fallen form. She issued orders in a tone that might have appeared measured and composed if he hadn’t seen the tremor in her hands.

The video ended as Shepard carried him off the battlefield, and Liara spoke again, sounding almost apologetic. “Samantha removed most of the Normandy’s cameras during the refitting, so I’ll have to skip ahead a bit.”

Kaidan recognized the next scene that came up on the video terminal as somewhere he’d grown all too familiar with: his treatment room at Huerta Memorial. His body lay unconscious on the bed, and he shied away from looking too closely. With his armor removed, the extensive bruising was all too obvious, and the sight was enough to trigger phantom aches as he remembered the pain he’d been in when he finally regained consciousness. 

Fortunately, the video offered something else to look at besides his own battered body. Shepard stood at his bedside, her posture far too rigid and her face a tightly controlled mask, carefully expressionless. Only her eyes gave away the struggle taking place underneath the blank surface.

The video lacked sound, so he couldn’t hear Shepard’s words, but he didn’t need to. Not with the guilt and regret and fear radiating off her, too strong for her to fully conceal. The video ended with Shepard still in frame, and he studied her face, tight with emotion and clear of the angry red lines he’d come to associate with her. He couldn’t help wondering how much the scars distorted or obscured her expressions, if she’d always been this easy to read without them.

Liara’s soft voice drew his attention away from the screen. “She put off meeting with the Council to see you.” 

It was delivered as a neutral observation, but the intended message was clear: Shepard still cared. And now it was up to him to decide what to do with that knowledge.

 

Mica pushed away from her terminal, unable to keep looking through the files EDI had sent, the things Liara had gathered to show Kaidan. They must be for him; there was no other reason for Liara to dig so precisely into so many painful memories. Not unless she’d been indoctrinated and wanted to undermine the Normandy by handing the enemy intel on the crew’s weaknesses. Honestly, a part of Mica would have almost preferred that explanation. Betrayal to the enemy might have hurt less than Liara giving Kaidan a private window into Shepard’s pain. 

She couldn’t have chosen better if she’d been deliberately trying to inflict maximum damage; the collection was perfectly targeted. That damned letter from after Horizon, the slim fragment of hope she’d clung to through the rest of her suicide mission. Video from Mars and Huerta, a greatest hits reel of things crumbling apart just as she’d thought she might have a chance to salvage something. 

Pain coalescing into something easier to deal with, Shepard leaned forward, ignoring the chill on her cheeks that told her they were wet, and stabbed a finger into the comm button. 

She met Liara’s greeting with a sharp question. “Has he seen it yet?” 

A pause, then an answer with only the faintest hint of a tremor. “Yes. Half an hour ago.”

“You had no right.” Shepard hated that her voice broke, and she repeated the words in a furious snarl to drown out the weakness. “You had no right!” 

“No, I didn’t. But he did.” Liara had gone strangely calm. “Kaidan deserves to know who he is, everything about his life, and that has to include what you are to him. He had a right to the truth.” 

Shepard clamped her jaw tight to hold in harsh words that would have come out as a scream or, worse yet, a sob. She drew a long breath through her nose and tried to control the mix of anger, betrayal, terror swirling around in her mind. 

“All I did was give him access to information he should have already had.” Liara continued, soothing and sympathetic in a way that made Mica want to hit something. Preferably Liara. “Wait to see what he does with his newfound knowledge before you judge me too harshly for my actions. I think Kaidan may surprise you, Shepard.” 

She couldn’t stand to hear the warm smile in Liara’s voice, optimism that triggered a damning curl of false hope in the tightness of her chest. Mica thumbed off the comm, unable to hear more. Swallowing back her reaction, the screams and tears and whimpers that wanted to escape, she connected to a different channel. 

“Hey, Lola. Need something?” 

“Dance partner. Now.” She barked out the words, biting them off roughly to keep anything else from leaking out with them. 

Vega hesitated on the other end of the line before responding with a casual air that was almost convincingly relaxed. “Sure thing. I’ll meet you in the cargo bay in five.”   
Her shoulders sagged with relief as she cut the channel. Sparring with Vega was exactly what she needed right now. A distraction to clear all the thoughts from her head. Someone to hit who could take it. Physical pain, the sharp clean kind that she knew how to handle, how to grit her teeth through and push past. And a scalding shower afterwards to wash it all away with hot water pouring over her until she couldn’t feel the tears.


	9. Chapter 9

The elevator ride up to the Loft lasted just long enough for Kaidan to seriously question what the hell he was doing.

He’d spent the past two hours thinking about what Liara had shown him, turning it over in his mind and going back through everything else he’d pieced together about his past with a new eye. And no matter how he approached it, he kept coming to the same conclusion. He needed to talk to Shepard.

But now, standing outside the door to her quarters, Kaidan couldn’t help but think he was making a mistake in approaching her like this. He was about a heartbeat from turning around to leave when the door slid open. Either Shepard had heard the elevator ping or she had a proximity sensor on her cabin door. Either way, it was too late to think about running.

“Something you needed?” Shepard stood framed in the doorway, in uniform but with hair damp from a shower. She stared at him warily, her eyes hard. Her words were casual, but Kaidan could see the tension that filled her body as soon as she saw him, like she was bracing herself for something.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” He hadn’t decided ahead of time to open with that, but as soon as the words came out, he knew that he meant them.

Shepard’s emotionless mask didn’t even flicker. “That would mean a lot more if you had any idea what you were apologizing for.”

“I know that I hurt you, and I never wanted to.”

Something changed in Shepard’s face at that, emotion twisting her features momentarily, but she covered her reaction so quickly that he couldn’t be sure what it had been. Instead of responding, she turned away, taking a few steps into the room. The door stayed open behind her, so Kaidan decided to take it as an invitation and followed, keeping some distance between them.

After a few moments of silence broken only by the hum of machinery and the bubbling of her empty fish tank, Shepard turned back towards him, her face once again composed and expressionless. “I suspect that’s not the only reason you stopped by.”

“You’d be right about that.” This was where things got complicated, and it was the part of his plan – if he could even describe it as a plan – that was probably the most stupid. But he was here, and if he let himself back out now he’d probably never have the nerve to try again. Kaidan felt his forehead prickle with nervous sweat, and he rubbed at it before speaking. “I’m assuming Liara told you about Dr Chakwas’s muscle memory hypothesis?”

“I’ve heard the general theory.” Shepard’s tone hovered somewhere between curiosity and impatience, but there was something else in her expression. Uncertainty, maybe.

Well, that made two of them.

“That’s kind of why I’m here. I’ve been asking around about, well… us.”

Shepard’s lips pressed together into a grim line, but she didn't seem surprised. She couldn’t really have expected he wouldn’t find out eventually. Even so, she folded her arms tightly, almost protectively, over her chest.

Kaidan pressed on in the face of her obviously closed posture, determined to get through this. “From what I’ve learned, I can’t accept that I could completely forget how I feel about you. Not with everything that happened between us. I was hoping that, based on muscle memory, I might remember something if you… kissed me.”

He was pretty sure that surprised her, though. Her eyes widened, and she froze completely. Shepard remained motionless, staring at him with an expression that was completely unreadable. He could see the muscles in her face shift as she clenched and unclenched her jaw, and she was nearly vibrating with the sudden increase in tension.

The silence stretched on with no end in sight, and Kaidan knew he’d made a serious mistake. Now that he said it aloud, the idea that had been desperate but moderately rational in his head was clearly and unforgivably insane.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” Kaidan shook his head hopelessly. What had he been thinking, asking his commanding officer to cure his amnesia with a kiss? It sounded like something out of a fairy tale. And it was pretty clear Shepard wasn’t the type to believe in happily-ever-afters.

Shepard still didn’t respond, continuing to stare at him in shock. He looked away, unable to withstand her gaze any longer. Ducking his head to hide the flush on his cheeks, Kaidan started towards the door, wanting to put some space between himself and this act of utter insanity.

He didn’t make it two steps before he was drawn up short by a tight grip on his bicep. Startled, he responded to the firm pressure, turning back towards Shepard. Her lips parted slightly, and he thought she was finally going to say something, but no words emerged. This was the nearest Kaidan could ever remember being to her, and he found himself unable to look away from her eyes. They were wide and dark, full of emotions he couldn’t identify. This close, he could see angry red flecks mixed in with the green, further signs of graft rejection and likely the source of the strange golden glow he’d seen once or twice and thought he had to be imagining.

Shepard continued staring, studying him as if she could read some answer on his face. Kaidan thought he should say something, but words completely deserted him under her intense scrutiny. He had no idea what she was looking for, and he wondered if she knew either.

Suddenly, she appeared to reach a decision. He had a moment to see her features strengthen with resolve before she closed the distance between them, her mouth pressing tightly against his.

Too startled to think, Kaidan responded completely on instinct, head tilting at just the right angle and arms folding around her back to pull her closer. The curve of her spine under his hand felt as familiar as a biotic mnemonic or an omnitool.

Even without those reflexes, Kaidan would have known this wasn’t a first kiss. There was no hesitation in the way he and Shepard touched each other, the way their mouths met. It was all passion and need, reunion and rediscovery. Shepard’s hand slid up from gripping his arm to rest on his shoulder, her thumb rubbing light patterns on the side of his neck in a spot that made him shiver. Kaidan ran his hands over her back, feeling the tension in her muscles. He pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, urging her wordlessly to relax and let go of the fear. Shepard made a tiny, strangled noise in her throat, pressing tighter against him, and Kaidan forgot all about thinking.

When Shepard finally pulled back, Kaidan was keenly aware of the lack of contact. His heart was pounding like he’d been running, and it took a conscious effort to breathe normally. Shepard had pushed away to arms’ length and was regarding him with a look of expectation, an unspoken question. It took him a minute to recall that there had been a stated purpose to this exercise, and he gave her the most honest answer he could, without thinking.

“I don’t remember having kissed you before, but I’m very certain I want to do it again.”

Shepard froze for the space of two ragged breaths before surging forward, crashing into him with such force that he stumbled backwards a step before steadying them both. Her mouth was hot and eager against his, and her whole body melded against him. Kaidan’s arms wrapped back around her, one hand cupping the back of her neck, fingers threading into her still damp hair. Shepard clung to him, gripping his shoulder and fisting her hand in his shirt like she never intended to let him go. Kaidan readily abandoned any attempt at analyzing or worrying and let himself surrender to how good – how _right_ – it felt to be holding and kissing Shepard like this.

Kaidan wasn’t entirely sure how they got from the door to the bedside – Hadn’t there been steps between the two? – but he had no intention of protesting that development. Since waking up with no memories, he’d learned to rely on his instincts, and at the moment every instinct in his body was telling him that right here – with Shepard – was exactly where he needed to be.

So when she began undressing him, he cooperated enthusiastically, helping to strip off both of their uniforms so they could tumble into the bed together.

 

Kaidan surfaced from a deep sleep, disoriented by unfamiliar surroundings and trying to place where he was and what had woken him. Both questions were answered by the sound of panicked gasping breaths coming from the other side of the bed. Raising his head, he saw Shepard twitching in her sleep, scarred face contorted with fear and eyes flicking rapidly back and forth beneath her closed lids.

Gently so as not to startle her – he’d learned the hard way about biotic reflexes kicking in during nightmares while he was still in Huerta – Kaidan reached over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Shepard?” He lightly shook her, hoping to disrupt whatever dream she was caught in.

After a few seconds, Shepard’s eyes flew open, wide with panic and startlingly bright in the dim lighting. She pulled away from his loose grip and sat up, gasping for breath. Kaidan propped himself up on an elbow and stretched out his hand towards her, murmuring soft reassurances. But she shied away from his touch, curling in on herself, so he waited in silence as her ragged breathing slowed to normal and she flopped back down onto the pillows.

“Bad dream?” he asked softly. It was an unnecessary question, but it seemed like a safe place to start.

Shepard huffed out a breath. “Pretty much always.” Her tone was flat and matter-of-fact, inviting neither comfort nor pity. She avoided looking at Kaidan, staring blankly out the viewport in the ceiling at the empty starscape.

Kaidan wanted more than anything to hold her, stroke her back, and give her some measure of comfort. The surge of protectiveness almost surprised him, and he wondered if it was some partial shard of memory, a remnant of how he’d cared for her before. But given the way she’d been flinching from his touch since she woke up, he didn’t think his reassurance would be welcome.

Instead, he opted for light, casual conversation, trying to match the air of detachment she was projecting. “Maybe it’s the bed. I’ve been having some pretty strange dreams myself. You could see about moving it a few feet, find a spot with better psychic energy or something.”

Shepard turned her head to look at him, her face blank and eyes hard. All of the walls had come back up. “You’re welcome to go sleep somewhere else if you’d be more comfortable.”

Shit. That wasn’t what he’d meant at all. “I’d rather stay.”

Shepard shrugged, her posture remaining closed and tense.

Kaidan clamped down on the sigh of frustration he wanted to vent. Just when he’d thought he was making progress with her, she closed back up. He couldn’t imagine how he’d ever gotten through to her in the first place if she’d been this resistant when they originally met.

Shepard returned to staring out the ceiling viewport, and Kaidan continued to study her, wanting to puzzle out the mystery that was Mica Shepard. It was clear she wasn’t open to sympathy about her nightmares or any of the other things that haunted her or weighed her down. But he remembered the way she had melted against him when he kissed her, how she had fallen asleep later with a hand on his chest, soothed by the contact. If that was the only way he could get her to let him past the walls, the only way she would relax and let go for a little bit, he was willing to work with that. More than willing.

“Strange dreams are a small price to pay, given the perks.” He waited until she glanced over, eyebrow slightly raised in curiosity, before letting his gaze drift obviously over her torso, the sheets having slid down to her waist when she sat up. Her lips quirked into a tiny grin, and her eyebrow tilted in a challenge.

Slowly, Kaidan dragged the back of his fingers lightly down her arm, feeling her shiver at the contact. He let his hand rest on her abdomen, warm against her chilled skin. “Since we’re both awake anyway…”  
With a throaty chuckle, Shepard rolled towards him, her body settling over him and her mouth seeking his as he continued rediscovering the contours of her body.


	10. Chapter 10

Mica woke up to a sense of warmth and relaxation. The warmth was familiar; accelerated biotic metabolism meant she always ran hot. But her sleep now was anything but restful, filled with images of failure and burning. She couldn’t remember what it was like to wake up feeling relaxed and content, and the unfamiliar sensation made her wary. Her muscles tensed as she came alert, the languor quickly dissipating. 

Her increased awareness registered an arm resting around her waist, familiar yet foreign, accompanied by slow steady breathing and the heat of a second biotic metabolism warming her bed. She tried not to do the math on how long it had been since she’d woken up like this, even as she tried to ignore how much, after all that time, it still felt so right to wake up next to Kaidan. 

But It didn’t matter how much she wanted him here; he shouldn’t be. Kaidan had shown up at her door, nervous and hopeful, with no idea what he was asking. She should have let him walk away when he tried to, but everything had been so damned familiar. He’d looked at her with the same hesitant certainty, the same trust, so much like the night before Ilos when they’d decided to hell with the fraternization regs. She’d known it was a mistake as she was making it, but she touched him, and he held her, and she was lost. 

Mica’s life had been full of mistakes, disaster after disaster, trailing after her like a ship’s wake. Too many to try to keep track of. Last night was one she couldn’t regret. A night with Kaidan. A night of feeling cherished and wanted and not alone. A lie she’d eagerly jumped into headfirst because she needed so badly to pretend it was true. 

She couldn’t stay. Slowly, Mica slipped out from under Kaidan’s arm, edging her way out of the bed, shivering as the cabin air hit her biotic-warmed skin. Grabbing her clothes from the floor, she dressed as quickly and quietly as possible. The wrinkles in her uniform weren’t important; she could change into a spare set she kept in a locker a couple of decks down. Right now, what mattered was getting out of her quarters before Kaidan woke up. 

Before those eyes opened. Before he looked at her again like he had when her nightmares had woken them both in the middle of the night. Because if he looked at her like that again, full of compassion and understanding and care, she would compound her sin without a second thought. She’d let him take her back to bed, lose herself in the comfort of his body and the tenderness of his touch. She would take advantage of him again, capitalizing on his ignorance, and he’d have even more reason to hate her once he finally remembered why he’d left her in the first place. 

 

The next time Kaidan woke up, he was alone. A quick check confirmed that the sheets on the rest of the bed were cold and Shepard’s uniform was missing from the pile of clothes on the floor. She’d obviously been gone for a while.

Being in Shepard’s quarters in her absence made him uncomfortable, like he was intruding. He quickly gathered his discarded clothing, pulled it on, and returned to the crew deck to shower and change into fresh fatigues.

As he went through the familiar routines with his mind still in the hazy place it occupied before he was fully awake, Kaidan began idly contemplating the strange dreams he’d been having, trying to sort through the images and make sense of them. He’d tried to joke with Shepard about disconcerting dreams, but the truth was that his mind had conjured up some pretty odd visions the previous night, and they kept nagging at him in a way that he couldn’t quite let go of.

Some of the images that flashed through his head as he stood in the shower made sense, to a certain extent. Shepard’s face with a different set of scars, bathed in a pale blue light and smiling up at him without a hint of mistrust or fear. Garrus suited up in armor, sighting carefully down a sniper rifle. A ship corridor in flames around him as he dashed through it. Shepard again, wearing armor flecked with blood and wreathed in a biotic corona, a fierce battle rictus distorting her features. They weren’t specific incidents he remembered, but given the footage Liara had shown him, the mission reports he’d read, and the company he’d been keeping, they seemed like reasonable themes for his subconscious to be remixing while he slept.

But the other images weren’t things he could explain as readily. A smiling, middle-aged woman standing beneath an apple tree. Landscapes, lush or desolate or exotic. A pretty, dark-haired girl, eyes wide with fear, backing away from him as he tried to apologize. Sunrise over a vast body of water. Most of the pictures were entirely innocuous, but he was bothered less by the scenes themselves than by the sense of importance they carried. He could sense they ought to mean something to him, but understanding them was like trying to grasp a handful of sand, the context slipping through his fingers. These fragments were more than he’d had for weeks, so he should probably be grateful for the progress, but it was so damned frustrating to know things - _important things _\- without understanding why they mattered.__

__The images continued to nag at him after he finished his morning routine. On a hunch, he pulled up his personal records and then started extranet image searches. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. Her face looked older in the pictures he found than it did in his mental image, and none of the photos on the extranet included the apple tree. But there was no question it was the same woman: his mother._ _

__He had remembered his mother’s face._ _

__It was such a simple thing, one tiny detail from an entire life he’d lost, but it felt significant. This was something he could be sure he’d truly remembered, not just a false memory reconstructed out of his research and wishful thinking. And if he’d remembered one thing, one true memory, how many of the other images floating around his head this morning were real, too? If he were the betting man Vega had been trying to groom him into, he’d wager that a lot of them were._ _

__But the memories – if that’s what they really were – were so jumbled up that he couldn’t make any sense of them. The pieces didn’t line up into anything substantial. He didn’t know what they meant. It was maddening to have the images right at hand and still not be any closer to knowing._ _

__Kaidan carefully unclenched his hands and focused on breathing deeply, steady and slow. This was a puzzle, just like any decryption problem, and getting angry never got him closer to solving a puzzle. It required patience and meticulous attention to detail. And sometimes, it required knowing when to admit you were stuck and ask for help._ _

__

__Liara glanced up from her display screens as the door slid open, a warm smile coming to her face when she saw Kaidan. “I expected you’d come by to see me before long.” She chuckled. “Since no one else is on board.”_ _

__“Shepard’s planetside?” Kaidan tried to pretend she’d left on an urgent mission rather than running from what had happened last night, but he didn’t believe it. He suspected he’d never been very good at lying to himself._ _

__Liara nodded. “She left a few hours ago. Garrus and James are with her, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with only me for company today.”_ _

__“That sounds like just what I was hoping for.” He paused, unexpectedly nervous. “I need to ask you for a favor.”_ _

__“Most information brokers would charge for this, you know.” Liara’s lingering smile removed any irritation her words might have suggested._ _

__“Then it’s lucky for me I need an asari rather than an information broker.”_ _

__“Oh?” Liara’s brows rose, and Kaidan savored having surprised her for once._ _

__“I’ve been having these flashes of… I guess you could call them recovered memories.” Kaidan shrugged, struggling with the limitations of his vocabulary and comprehension. “They seem like memories, at least, but they’re all mixed up. I can’t get them sorted out enough to make sense of things.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought maybe if you got inside my head, you might be able to untangle some of the mess, like you did for Shepard with the message from the Prothean beacon.”_ _

__Liara thought for a moment before responding. “I believe I may be able to provide assistance, although the process is unlikely to be pleasant or simple, given the extent of your memory loss and the scope of what I’ll be working with.” She stopped, blinking suddenly. “How did you know that about Shepard? Did she mention it to you?”_ _

__“The beacon?” Kaidan stared at her, perplexed. “It’s not exactly a secret that a Prothean artifact was discovered on Eden Prime.”_ _

__“No, it isn’t. But I don’t think any of the official reports you’ve accessed describe my role in ordering Shepard’s thoughts following her exposure to the Prothean distress message.” A smile brightened Liara’s face. “Which supports the premise that you’re regaining memories.”_ _

__“Huh, I guess it does.” Kaidan returned her smile for a moment before his nerves took over. However logical it was to ask someone to reformat his head, he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. “So, uh… how does this work?” He gestured vaguely between the two of them._ _

__“You need to open your mind to allow me to enter. It works best if you trust me and are certain about wanting me to access your memories.” She tilted her head in a question. “Are you sure this is what you want?”_ _

__“I am.” Shoving aside any misgivings, Kaidan squared his shoulders, decisive and firm. “I’m tired of groping around in the dark. I want the truth. All of it, good and bad. Whatever it is, I can take it, and anything you find in there is going to be a hell of a lot better than not knowing.”_ _

__Nodding, Liara stepped nearer, closing most of the distance and facing him directly with none of her usual evasion. “Relax, Kaidan.” Her voice took on a slower cadence, her tone soothing and almost hypnotic. “Clear your mind and open your thoughts to me.” His eyes drifted partway shut before her now inky gaze locked onto them. “ _Embrace eternity_.”_ _

__Kaidan felt like he was falling into the dark pools that Liara’s eyes had become or drifting in zero gravity surrounded by vast, open space. Then the emptiness around him suddenly filled to overflowing, and he was bombarded with flashes of memories, images flickering through his mind so quickly that they blended together into an overwhelming maelstrom. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. Even the parts that seemed familiar slipped by so quickly that he wasn’t able to grasp onto anything recognizable or meaningful._ _

__He thought he would acclimate, but the mental assault only grew. The pace intensified, fragments of memories coming more rapidly than he could possibly understand, each one accompanied by a powerful pulse of emotion. The deluge of intense conflicting sensations left him reeling, and he stopped struggling to comprehend, abandoning himself to the swirling maelstrom._ _

__Kaidan couldn’t begin to guess how long the process lasted; measuring time was impossible while adrift in a ravaging storm formed from his own thoughts. When the bombardment finally calmed, he opened his eyes, gasping and dizzy, trying to fix himself into the present. The room’s lighting stabbed into his head, and he quickly clenched his eyelids back shut, clamping down on the urge to groan._ _

__“That was…” Liara’s voice intruded into his reality. The sound grated painfully on his over-sensitized nerves, fresh pain blooming in his head. He swallowed back a whimper._ _

__Liara tried again, sounding shaken herself. “That was the most extensive memory reconstruction I’ve ever attempted, nearly as difficult as grasping the foreign data Shepard received from the Prothean beacon. I think… It seemed to go well. It will likely take time for everything to settle in clearly, but I’m hopeful that you’ll regain the vast majority of your lost memories. There will almost certainly be a few remaining gaps, however.”_ _

__“Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few holes in my head right now.” Kaidan abandoned trying to conceal his winces as every word stabbed into his brain. Liara meant well, but he was in no shape to handle her bright, cheerful, and far too loud debrief at the moment. “Can we table this for later?” Such as after his brain stopped trying to pound its way out of his skull._ _

__Liara offered a sympathetic noise and lowered her voice. “Headaches are an unfortunately common side effect from this sort of memory work. For someone with your existing predisposition to migraines, it’s likely that your reaction will be somewhat… unpleasant for a little while.” He heard the rustling of her clothing as she moved, and the light pressing against his eyelids dimmed, becoming slightly less unbearable._ _

__“I think you could say that.” His own voice grated in his head, setting off a pulsing, uneven rhythm and a wave of nausea._ _

__“You should go see Dr Chakwas. There’s a particular type of sedative you’ve used in the past to help you rest until the worst of the migraine subsides. She began stocking them again when Shepard brought you on board.” She paused before adding an afterthought. “By the time you wake up, your memories should be clearer, as well.”_ _

__Kaidan nodded, wincing at the incautious movement. “Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll go take your advice now.”_ _

__Eyes squinted shut to minimize light exposure, Kaidan staggered through the ship to the medbay, struggling to control his growing nausea as the pain in his head intensified. The doctor, bless her, recognized the problem on sight and was reaching for the sedative before he opened his mouth. She administered it, advising him that it was fast acting and he ought to locate his bunk quickly._ _

__Kaidan had no complaints about complying with her directive, heading straight to his bunk and collapsing into it with a muffled groan. The pulsing throb in his head diminished slightly in the quiet darkness, and Kaidan’s last thought as he slipped into unconsciousness was that whatever memories he woke up with had better be worth this._ _

__

__Kaidan woke up disoriented, with the hollow, drained feeling that came in the wake of a migraine. Given the intensity of the headache hangover, this one must have been particularly bad. Groggy, he sat up and rubbed at his face, then blinked a few times to bring his surroundings into focus. He was wearing wrinkled fatigues and had slept on top of the blanket. If he hadn’t managed to change or even pull a blanket over himself when he collapsed into bed and passed out, this had definitely been a bad one._ _

__A migraine on that level usually meant a mission that had pushed him to his limits and beyond. But his headache hangover was missing the residual ache that went with biotic overexertion. He hadn’t brought on the migraine by overclocking his amp for once. Rolling his shoulders to loosen stiff muscles, he tried to orient himself. Sleeping off shift always threw him off, even when he didn’t have a migraine hangover to contend with._ _

__With a sudden rush, Kaidan woke the rest of the way up, and everything - everything - flooded back with an overwhelming intensity. Looking back over the past few weeks, he could see now that he’d been missing more than simply memories. Right now, for the first time since he’d regained consciousness in Huerta Memorial, he knew who he was. His sense of identity wasn’t something taken on faith; it was an unshakable core foundation._ _

__Cautious, not wanting to assume more than was warranted, he combed through his memories of the past, checking for remaining gaps. As far as he could tell, Liara’s jigsaw assembly had worked, his past and present slotting together into a mostly coherent whole. A few details were fuzzy around the edges, like some of the pieces hadn’t completely lined up yet, but he no longer ran into a gaping void when he tried to think back further than that hospital room on the Citadel._ _

__And one thing that became extremely, painfully clear was that he needed to talk to Shepard. He didn’t know if they could find a way past all of the misunderstandings, the betrayals, the apologies that hadn’t happened. But after what Liara had shown him yesterday, after the way Shepard had looked at him, touched him, _needed_ him, he knew that he’d regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t try. _ _

__“EDI, is the shore party back on board?”_ _

__“No, Major, they have not returned to the Normandy.” The synthetic voice sounded sympathetic, but Kaidan remembered her cutting off his airway, the hand around his throat squeezing implacably until his world went black. He shuddered and took a deep breath entirely to remind himself that he could. There were some memories he might have preferred not to get back._ _

__EDI continued, making no comment about his prolonged silence. “Would you like me to inform you when an ETA becomes available?”_ _

__“I’d appreciate that.” He countered the memory from Mars with a more recent one: EDI sitting in the cockpit, needling Joker with deadpan humor so seamlessly delivered it was hard to tell when she was joking. EDI was part of the crew, and a good part at that. There was no reason to blame the hardware platform for the software that used to run on it. “Thank you, EDI.”_ _

__“You are welcome, Major. I’ll let you know when I have information for you.”_ _


	11. Chapter 11

Waiting for Shepard’s team to return to the Normandy, Kaidan had some time to kill. And a lot to catch up on. 

The lingering after-effects of the migraine persuaded him that his first stop needed to be medbay. In addition to helping with the headache hangover, Dr Chakwas ought to be able to confirm whether he had his head on straight. She might not be a psych expert, but he trusted her to handle his sudden memory recovery with the same poised competence she applied to every other oddity Shepard’s crew had thrown at her over the years. 

The doctor greeted him with a warm smile that broadened even further as he explained Liara’s reconstruction work and its apparent success. Even better, her mood remained undimmed as she performed her own assessment of his memory recovery, promising to pass on the results to his treatment staff at Huerta Memorial. She sent him on his way with a recommendation to work on identifying any remaining deficits to prevent being caught unaware by an unexpected gap in his memory at a critical moment. Kaidan would have done that anyway, but it was a welcome sign that the doctor had brought it up. With any luck, that meant she wanted to clear him for active duty as soon as possible, and he’d do anything he could to speed that process along. He’d done more than enough sitting idly by, convalescing, while the galaxy fell apart. 

After that, he started the laborious process of sorting through the weeks’ worth of messages that had accumulated in his inbox while he couldn’t access it. Thankfully, the elusive passwords had come back to him along with everything else. He was maybe a third of the way through when EDI contacted him. 

“Major Alenko, the shore party has returned. With injuries. They are en route to medbay now.” 

His gut clenched with sudden certainty - the sort of instinctive reaction he’d learned to trust in recent weeks with nothing else to rely on - that Shepard was the one injured. Without conscious thought, he was on his feet, sprinting through the ship and trying to ignore the feeling of deja vu. Phantom flames flickered in his peripheral vision as his mind insisted the corridors should be on fire. 

He rejected the memory and tried to rein in the rising panic. This wasn’t Alchera, and he was not going to lose her again. 

Kaidan intercepted part of the shore party halfway to medbay, an unconscious Shepard draped limply in Vega’s arms. He’d rarely wished so hard to be wrong. 

Shepard still wore her combat armor, helmet and all, the hardsuit battered so badly that Kaidan didn’t want to think about the damage it hadn’t been able to protect her from. A biotic corona flickered fitfully around the outside of her armor, the only outward sign of life. Kaidan focused on that pale blue glow as proof that the universe hadn’t managed to rip her away from him a second time. At least not yet. 

He didn’t ask Vega what had happened; he already knew enough. A mission had gone wrong. Or maybe it had gone as well as it could have, with no good outcome available. He didn’t need to know the details right now; they didn’t matter. There would be time enough to worry about the Alliance and politics and Reapers once Shepard was all right. He ignored the bleak thought that there might not be much point to worrying about most of those things if she wasn’t. 

Shepard’s biotics flared in an erratic pattern, giving off sparking surges of energy that grounded into Vega’s body. The lieutenant flinched with each pulse, his lips set in a grim line as he pushed through the pain. He managed several more steps before staggering under a sudden, violent surge, then regaining his balance with a muttered curse in his native Spanish. 

Kaidan was at his side in a heartbeat. “Let me take her.” 

“I’ve got this, man.” The words came out through gritted teeth as James struggled to regain his balance, getting a firmer grip on Shepard’s dead weight. Then her biotics flared again, a crackling flicker of energy arcing across his chest, and a small grunt of pain escaped him. He did his best to ignore the lapse, fixing Kaidan with a defiant glare. “I can handle it.” 

“You can, yes. Until she puts out a warp strong enough to crush something important.” Kaidan kept his voice level, controlled, that of a reasonable superior officer rather than a man afraid he was watching his lover die, again. 

“Think you’re tougher, major?” Vega’s hard stare held challenge, but he couldn’t hide the signs of strain. The muscles in his neck stood out in cords of tension, sweat slicked his skin, and a fog of painkillers dulled the fierceness of his eyes, proof his suit’s med routines were compensating for some injuries of his own. Kaidan wasn’t surprised; if Shepard had come back in this bad of shape, her team wouldn’t have walked out unscathed. 

“Tougher than you?” Kaidan barked out a laugh. “We both know I’m not. Not after how I handled those beatings you call workouts.” 

“You kept up all right.” Vega’s acknowledgment and unsolicited, sincere praise startled him - and formed a bond he could capitalize on. 

Kaidan took a half step closer. “What Shepard needs right now isn’t strength, or even tenacity. You’d be my first call if she did. In this moment, though, she needs someone who can do this.” 

The soft glow of a biotic shield flowed into life around Kaidan’s arm as he stretched his hand out towards the flickering corona that wreathed Shepard, violent sparks of energy grounding harmlessly against his fingertips. “You’ve done a hell of a job, lieutenant. And now the mission’s over, and I’m relieving you. I’ll take it - her - from here.” 

Vega’s forehead creased in thought for a second as he studied Kaidan’s face, then he seemed to reach a decision, gently passing Shepard’s limp form into Kaidan’s arms. Her weight settled against him comfortably, despite the writhing snarl of her roiling biotics. 

Once his hands were free, the lieutenant surprised Kaidan with a respectful salute that he wasn’t able to return beyond a gratified nod. As Kaidan shifted Shepard’s weight in his arms, turning towards the medbay, Vega spoke, his voice soft and rough but approving. “I get it now, you and Lola.” Then he grunted with pain, wincing as he was forced to admit to human limitations. “Tell the doc I’ll be by for a check up after she has Shepard stable.” 

“Will do, lieutenant.” 

Kaidan carried Shepard through the ship’s corridors, trying to remember a time she’d let him see her so vulnerable and refusing to wonder if she’d be resisting his help if she were able to. Her biotics continued to flare against his shield, growing steadily weaker, and he tried not to think about the energy it was taking to sustain this unsteady corona, energy she didn’t have to spare. What had happened to her planetside that her body poured its reserves into defending against a nonexistent threat even while she lay injured and unconscious? 

Alerted by EDI or Garrus, Dr Chakwas had the medbay prepared for Shepard’s arrival. Her lips pinched into a thin line as she observed the blue light flickering around her patient. “I’d hoped that would have stopped by now.” 

Kaidan nodded grimly, taking in the delicate diagnostic instruments set carefully out of range of the sparking biotic arcs. The doctor’s hesitation was understandable. Kaidan’s field medic training prescribed sedation for uncontrolled biotic discharge, not much help when the patient was already unconscious. 

Dr Chakwas remained frozen with hesitation, her gaze on Kaidan, and he fought against the panic clawing at his throat as the best military doctor he’d ever met looked to him for advice. 

Taking a deep breath, he reminded himself that she wasn’t expecting him to be an expert on medical treatment, just on biotics and Shepard. That he should be able to do. “Do we…” His voice came out rough, weaker than he liked, and he cleared his throat to try again. “Do we know what happened to trigger this?” 

“Garrus reported that Shepard was caught in a collapse.” The doctor’s clipped tone projected forced clinical detachment, a professional barrier she was forced to erect. “By the time he and the lieutenant dug her out, she had lost consciousness. It appeared she used her biotics, at least initially, to shield herself from being crushed by the debris.” 

“So the question is why she didn’t stop once she was free.” Other than reliving her own personal hell, trapped under a collapsed building with only a biotic cocoon to keep her alive. Shepard’s body might be in the Normandy’s medbay, but Kaidan would lay odds that her mind wasn’t back in the horrors of Mindoir. 

“She may yet. We could try waiting her out.” Dr Chakwas’s dubious tone gave her suggestion very little weight. “The suit’s readouts indicate stable vital signs.” 

Kaidan ignored the unspoken words that echoed in the silence after the doctor spoke: _For now._

“Negative, ma’am. As I understand it, the last time Shepard did this, she kept that cocoon up for three days. It nearly burned out her biotics and tapped her reserves so badly she would have starved if they’d found her any later.” 

“All right, then. Waiting is not to be considered.” The doctor’s face paled, but her voice remained steady, a note of fondness creeping past the professional distance. She didn’t question the validity of Kaidan’s information, which he found strangely gratifying. “I should have expected the commander would be stubborn enough that waiting for her to blink is a fool’s game.” 

“Before, she stopped when they dug her out of the rubble.” The energy crackling vibrantly around Shepard’s battered armor made it clear that hadn’t happened this time. “The problem could be the armor.” A combat suit was confining at the best of times, and the collapse had dented Shepard’s in enough places she might still feel trapped. “Getting it off her may help.”

“Or it may not.” Dr Chakwas’s lips drew down into a grim frown, professional caution coming to the forefront. “We have no way to tell what sort of damage she’s sustained in there. The suit’s med support routines, however limited, could be all that’s keeping her stable. If we deprive her of their aid and fail to stop the biotic flares, we would be doing more harm than good.” 

“If we wait until she exhausts herself enough that her biotics shut down, we’re damn near guaranteeing that she’s in bad shape regardless of whatever else may be wrong. We have to do _something_.” Kaidan clamped his jaw shut to stop the flow of harsh, angry words and misdirected anger. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he closed his eyes and exhaled heavily before looking back to the doctor. “I don’t know that I’m right, so I’m open to other suggestions, ma’am.” 

“I wish I had any to give you.” The deepening lines in her face betrayed the same frustrated struggle against unknown odds. “The suit certainly won’t support her indefinitely, and as you say, standing idly by while the situation worsens does her no good either. I do trust that you understand what’s driving Shepard at the moment, so if you believe that removing her armor will calm her, that may be our best option.” 

Deciding not to dispute the difference between best and only, Kaidan reformed the biotic shielding around his arms and stepped closer to Shepard. A small hiss of breath escaped between his teeth as stray arcs of energy grounded into his body with a sparking impact. His muscles tensed and twitched, reminding him of the warnings he’d given Vega earlier. If anything, the intensity of Shepard’s biotic defenses had increased since he’d gotten her to the medbay. The suit needed to come off before she exhausted herself. 

Steeling himself, teeth gritted against the pull and push of dark energy battering at his shielded arms, Kaidan reached for Shepard’s helmet, slipping open the latches and pulling it free of its seal. As the concealing opaque faceplate came away, he got a look at her for the first time since she’d been carried aboard. The blue corona wreathed her face, a tight flickering halo that obscured her features and complicated visual assessment. Even so, he thought she looked pale, eyes flitting rapidly side to side beneath closed lids. Her breath came too fast and shallow for normal unconsciousness. Memories surfaced like a punch to the gut, Shepard asleep but never at rest. 

Almost never. There had been a few times in the brief span where they’d shared a bed, a handful of times that he’d seen Shepard at peace. Times that he’d become a safe harbor where she could find shelter. He’d treasured the sight of her relaxed as much as her rare smiles or a genuine laugh. After all this time, after everything that had come between them, he needed to find a way to give her that again. 

Tentatively, Kaidan pressed further against Shepard’s wild biotics, sliding his hand through the flaring light with an effort, tensing against the crushing, sucking forces. His own fingers still shielded in the thinnest layer of biotics he could manage, he brushed away the strands of hair stuck to her forehead, gentle and soothing. “Hey, Shepard. You’re safe now, on the Normandy. Garrus and James made it back, too. You can relax and let the doc have a look at you.” 

He wasn’t sure that she could hear him, wherever she was inside her head, but he had vague memories of voices - of Shepard’s voice - filtering through before he’d woken up in Huerta. He hadn’t known who she was then, but her concern had been something to grasp at in the darkness. Shepard badly needed that right now, so if he could offer it to her… well, it didn’t hurt to try. 

Continuing to talk, his voice low and calm, Kaidan gingerly removed the rest of her armor, wincing at the contusions revealed as he pulled away the battered plates from places where her skin had darkened enough for the damage to show through the roiling biotic glow. The torso section came off last, one side dented in so badly he didn’t need any scans to tell him there were cracked ribs beneath the hematoma blooming under her skin. But the flickering energy around her was lighter blue now, her biotic defenses fading as the pressure was removed. 

Once the last of the suit was off, Shepard took a deep, shuddering breath, exhaling a whine of pain that fit Kaidan’s assumptions about her ribs. Her biotics flared up in response to the flash of pain, and Kaidan grunted, caught off guard by the force that nearly threw him from his feet. 

“Shepard.” Her name came out as a harsh plea, through gritted teeth, and he gripped the edge of the table, steadying himself. He needed to be calm for her. “Shepard, it’s all right now. You need to bring down the biotics and let the doctor work. You’re safe here; I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He took her hand, easing open the clenched fist and gently interleaving her fingers with his, the crackle of biotic energy sparking from both of them. 

Kaidan held his breath, waiting, holding Shepard’s hand and willing her to let someone help her, no matter how much it went against her nature. He’d let her go once, given in to her need to never be less than self-sufficient, and he’d lost her, listened to her suffocate over a comm. He’d let her go a second time, pulling back and watching her walk away, shattering her faith in him and herself. He’d had his reasons, and maybe they’d been good ones from where he was standing, but it had cost him, cost both of them. He wasn’t letting her go a third time. “I know I haven’t always given you a lot of reason, but trust me, Shepard. Please.” 

The biotic corona wreathing her battered body flickered and gradually, with aching slowness, faded, diminishing to faint blue lights that sparked intermittently, then died out. With a sigh of relief that was nearly a sob, Kaidan released his own biotic shielding and Doctor Chakwas sprang into action with a professional efficiency, assessing injuries and triaging treatment protocols. Grateful, Kaidan stood by and let her work. 

He didn’t let go of Shepard’s hand, and the doctor didn’t ask him to. 

.

Hours later, Kaidan was still in the medbay, seated by Shepard’s bedside, his back grateful for the chair Dr Chakwas had brought him without comment sometime after releasing Vega back to light duty. 

Shepard’s cracked ribs had thankfully proved to be the worst of her injuries, eclipsing the extensive collection of more minor bruises and small cuts. Dr Chakwas had also diagnosed the commander with exhaustion, although she hadn’t specified whether it was due to biotic overexertion or cumulative sleep deprivation. Either way, the unconscious Shepard had been given electrolytes and mild sedatives to ensure some rest that she couldn’t argue her way out of. Kaidan waited by her side while she slept, somehow unable to leave her even though she was in no danger, even though she didn’t need him and quite possibly wouldn’t want him there. 

Alone in the dimly lit room, he spoke to her softly, not knowing whether she could hear him or if he wanted her to.  “This is a change, you in the hospital bed and me sitting waiting. You’re not going to take the role reversal the whole way, though, I hope. The doc can't fully assess head trauma until you wake up, so I guess the option is still on the table. That would be ironic, you getting amnesia now that I finally remember.” 

He paused, studying the lines of faintly glowing scars that covered her exposed skin. In stillness, the webwork of cracks made her look fragile, like a broken thing barely repaired, ready to shatter back apart at the slightest touch. “I wonder if you would mind so much, waking up without your past. There’s probably a lot you'd like to forget.” He sighed, rubbing his thumb over his own knuckles rather than reaching for her hand. “I wouldn't blame you if I'm on that list.” 

But he wanted a chance to talk to her, even so. At the very least, he now knew what he needed to apologize for. 

.

Mica surfaced from blackness, coming awake gradually, her muscles relaxed and her pulse slow and calm. The peaceful lassitude lulled her into leaving her eyes closed for a few more moments, remaining in the unhurried fog of recent unconsciousness. Until a clear question made its way through her groggy thoughts. Why had she been sedated? 

Sleep always came with nightmares unless it came out of a vial. If she was waking up this rested, someone had put her under, and she needed to know who and why. Mica clawed her way free from the lingering tatters of unconsciousness and opened her eyes the barest slit to get a narrow glimpse of her surroundings. She kept her tensed muscles still to project the image of sleep to anyone watching. 

A thin sliver of light reached her eyes, dim enough that her sight adjusted quickly, taking in a small swath of white-paneled ceiling above her. Combined with a sterile, antiseptic odor and the pervasive low hum of equipment, that meant medical laboratory. With that awareness came a sudden flash of memory, and her arms twitched, pulling violently away from tubes and restraints that weren’t there. 

She heard a sharp intake of breath, someone else in the room, close on her left side. Her incautious movement had already ruined the illusion of sleep, so there was no need to pretend. Pushing up on her elbows, she turned to the side, eyes open and muscles tensed to spring. 

Her surroundings resolved into the SR-2’s medbay, overwriting the Cerberus lab from her memories, and the adrenaline spike of panic ebbed. But it wasn’t Dr Chakwas at her bedside, greeting her with a calming gesture and a sitrep. “The rest of your team’s fine. You took some damage, but the doc’s got it mostly sorted out. How are you feeling?” 

She blinked, still disoriented from the aftereffects of the sedation. “Kaidan?” 

“Yeah, Shepard, I’m here.” His voice was soft and slightly rough, stirring memories she didn’t want to think about too closely. He raised a hand that stretched towards her for a moment before retreating to rub at his forehead. Then his lips curled into a small, awkward smile so tempting she nearly missed his next words. “All of me.” 

She took a moment to work out what he meant, and then her gut tightened in wary expectation. “You remembered?” 

An answer wasn’t necessary, now that she was looking for it. There was something to how he held himself, a confident presence that had been lacking since Huerta. It was good to see Kaidan back to himself, but she couldn’t stop herself bracing for a storm: the repercussions from last night’s lapse in judgment, the scathing distrust he’d shown her on Mars, the cold distance he’d created between them on Horizon. 

“Yeah, I’ve got most of the pieces back.” Kaidan’s voice, his smile and eyes, everything about him was open and warm, holding none of the anger she’d prepared for. The heat in his gaze and flush on his cheeks gave his broadening smile a suggestive edge. “It looks like there’s something to be said for the muscle memory hypothesis. I probably shouldn’t give my docs the details of exactly how that worked out.” 

Caught off guard, Mica snorted, a suppressed laugh that caused a twinge in her side. She recognized the familiar ache of newly-mended ribs and masked her grimace of pain with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t think they’d be comfortable prescribing sleeping with an ex as a cure for amnesia?” 

Kaidan’s answering laugh sounded hollow, and his eyes didn’t quite meet hers as he continued in a more subdued tone. “That wasn’t the, uh, full treatment regime, anyway. Last night… jarred enough loose for Liara to do a hard drive reboot this morning.” He shrugged with a slight smile. “It helps to know a good asari.” 

Liara again. Mica should have known that she wouldn’t let it go. Pushing past the lingering pain in her side, she pulled herself to a sitting position, crossing her arms over her chest. She swallowed down the bubbling anger, leaving a bitterness in her mouth and a hollow ache in her chest. “Too bad she couldn’t have done that before setting you up to do something you’d regret.” 

Kaidan said nothing, staring down at his folded hands resting on the edge of her bed. His bowed head cast his face in shadow, revealing hints of a furrowed brow and tight lips. Mica prepared for the wave of resentment to finally break. 

Then he looked up, his eyes finding hers before she could look away. Kaidan had always looked at her like he saw something other people couldn’t, and the weight of his gaze caught her breath in her throat. His words bore into her with the same intense sincerity as his eyes. “Shepard... I don’t regret anything about last night. If you do… I’m sorry for putting you in that position, and that’s another thing I hope you’ll give me a chance to make up for.” 

Wordless, adrift, she stared at him, a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with fractured ribs. 

Kaidan’s eyes went distant as he searched for words, giving her a moment’s relief from the force of his gaze. “I’m not sure I can explain what was going through my head last night. You were the one piece of my past I most needed to understand, and I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I just knew I needed to be with you. I’m sorry for not thinking about what that must have been like for you. Having me show up like that--” 

“You don’t need to apologize.” Mica’s voice came out hoarse, ragged and vulnerable in a way she hated. Drawing herself up straight, she pushed on, bitter words coming out stronger and sharp. “I didn’t regret sleeping with you; I regretted taking advantage of you.” 

“You took advantage of me?” Kaidan’s startled laugh set her teeth on edge. “I walked into your quarters and asked you to kiss me. It’s not hard to guess where that might lead.” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck with a faintly teasing smile. “I think I knew what I was getting into.” 

“No, you didn’t. You couldn’t have.” She gritted her teeth against a flood of memories stirred up by that smile, channeling anger to hold back the tears stinging at her eyes as she forced him to understand. “Since coming back on this ship, you haven’t known a damned thing about me. I shouldn’t have let you into my bed when you couldn’t remember why you’d stopped trusting me enough to be there. I shouldn’t have let you believe whatever Liara dug up from however long ago to make you think...” 

“That’s enough!” Kaidan’s raised voice cut her off, his anger flaring sharply then vanishing as fast. “Shepard, stop. I’m a grown man; I don’t need you to protect me, especially not from you.” 

The anger sustaining her drained away along with his, leaving something hollow and raw in its place. “You had a right to know why you’d left.” 

“Why I left…” He shook his head with a soft, rueful laugh. “I’m not sure I understand that even without the amnesia. Not entirely.” He fixed her with another of those intense looks that made her feel so exposed. “But even with it, I knew that I never meant to hurt you - with Horizon, with anything - and I have. I’m sorry for that, more than I can say.” Kaidan’s hand flexed, like he wanted to reach for her but thought better of it. “We’ve got some things to work through, Shepard. But you need to know that I trust you, I care about you, and I want to be in your life, however I fit in there.” 

The tension in her chest eased, and Mica chuckled softly, the warmth in his voice drawing out a smile that felt rusty with disuse. “Hell, Kaidan, I’m not sure how _I_ fit into my life most of the time.” The restless energy ebbed, leaving her drained and weary, and she leaned back against the raised bed. “But I can try to make room for you if you want.” Relaxing, she let her left hand fall to rest on the blanket, inches from Kaidan’s. An invitation. 

“I’d like that, ma’am. Very much.” He moved his hand to rest just over hers, barely touching. 

Mica turned her hand underneath his, bringing their palms together and wrapping her fingers around his, warm and familiar and stable. She closed her eyes and remembered this connection to the one fixed point in her galaxy. Squeezing his hand more tightly, she opened her eyes again and looked over at Kaidan, trusting him to read her the way he always had. “It’s good to have you back, Kaidan.” 

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.” 

His quiet sincerity reassured her, and Mica lay back, eyes drifting closed again as she kept hold of his hand, trusting that he would be here when she woke up again, and they would move into the unknown together.


End file.
